How does your garden grow?

Thank you for all the birthday wishes! I had a lovely day with my family, yummy food, roses, and two trips to the bookstore! I picked up a little inspiration with a giftcard from my friend Lauri. And my parents gave me an ice cream maker -- which kept the boys busy for a while yesterday!


They also spent a long time counting change from their piggy banks and sorting into bank rolls, which I found at the Dollar Tree last week. I was grateful for the distraction since the weather was wild outside, and I had a headache from a nasty fall on Monday. (I'm fine, but the stool for getting onto the trampoline is not! Yes, it's true, I'm officially too old for jumping... haha!)


Today we started our Disappearing Eggshell experiment -- but I realized my camera was dead too late to charge it! Maybe I'll get some pics of the final result tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to finally post about how our garden is doing!

This was the view from my kitchen window a couple weeks ago. The Chinese elm had just leafed out, and it was so peaceful outside.


Later, the wind picked up, and it became a little tricky to get out and garden since the dust and pollen gave us all the sneezes and sniffles. On Palm Sunday we stayed home from church so as not to gross everyone out, and spent some time catching up on our neglected garden.

My Eldest and Littlest helped plant potatoes next to the onions and garlic.

My seedlings have not done as well as I'd hoped, though I knew I was taking a chance to start them outside. The lettuces did fine, and three out of four green beans came up, but only one squash and one tomato sprouted. No peppers.

I'm hoping it's not to late to try again, this time in the ground directly. I gave in and bought a 6-pack of tomatoes just to have some. Then, a few days ago, I found a volunteer tomato plant sprouted in last season's compost pile! I carefully moved it to a safer place, so I hope the transfer doesn't kill it.

We weeded the peas and blackberry vines, which are doing great. Blooms on the berry vines already!

I planted cilantro with the tomatoes, but I need to clear out the winter patch to make room for more herbs. I will probably add some store-bought eggplant and peppers when this crazy weather is over. It's been in the 60s and very windy this week, but it's supposed to be in the 90s by the weekend!

The 20-foot stretch of ground below gave me the most trouble this spring. I spent hours and hours over the last three months combing through the soil with my gloved hands, filling buckets with broken glass, and digging up piles of tuberous roots.

A nasty, invasive tall grass has thrived in that spot since before we bought the house 11 years ago. My friend who gardened in our yard for 5 years had just ignored it. He dug up 90 years worth of broken glass from all over our yard, but after one or two attempts to get rid of the grass, decided it was too much trouble! But its time was up. I REALLY wanted to use that space.

Last week I finished amending the soil with the huge mound of compost Scott brought home for me. Into the ground went my corn and green beans!! Now we'll see if my trouble pays off, or if the grass takes over again!

We also planted our climbing summer squash. See how the Bibb lettuce self-seeded behind the trellis? I've been thinning the volunteers for weeks! They're doing way better than the lettuce I started myself even though they sprouted days apart.


We're also just enjoying the blooms of spring...


How is your garden growing?