The Garden

My garden is growing nicely and so are the weeds. We added straw to the tomato patch and I'm hoping that will give us a bit of relief from weeding.

Here's what we're growing this year:
tomatoes (I believe we have around 45)
peppers (not as many as I had hoped because one of my "helpers" kept dumping out the seedlings when they were still in the house)
kale
swiss chard
lettuce (I can't remember the kind, it's loose leaf)
onions
carrots
black beans
green beans
watermelon (maybe, they've been mowed twice)
butternut squash
pumpkins
zucchini (this is another maybe because our wood pile is now blocking a great deal of sunlight)
sugar snap peas
cilantro
basil
lemon balm
oregano
sage
parsley
thyme
chamomile

We also planted raspberries and grapes, although one of our grape vines bit the dust shortly after being planted.

The beauty of having used heirloom seeds is that we were in for a few surprises this year. I found eight small cherry tomato plants, a green bean plant, more tomatoes, some onions and two random chards that never came up last summer.

I planted the beans and peas together this year and it is working out great. The combination of the two plants does a nice job of blocking out the sunlight for the weeds.

The patch with the carrots and onions is sort of a waste of space. The carrot seeds must have washed into one corner because they are not in a nice, neat row like I planted them. I planted onions from seeds this year and will probably not do that again. I do have several onions growing, but it's hard to tell them apart from the weeds and I have to weed very slowly in that area. I need to figure out what to plant to fill up some of the wasted space.

I never did get the leeks or asparagus planted. I also will plant garlic this fall.