If you plant it, it will grow?
One thing I love about Oregon is how green it is. I cannot stand the rain that is responsible for all this lushness though. Once the rain ends it’s like this mad rush to get things planted and hope your garden has enough time to produce. Last year we were rainy until nearly July so our garden took a hit. The tomatoes didn’t have enough warm weather to really ripen and there were lots of green tomatoes around! I’m watching friends all over plant gardens in May and we are happy to have things in the ground by Memorial Day. This year isn’t much better but I’m still hopeful for a decent garden.
Last year was experimental year since it was the first year we had our garden. I wasn’t entirely sure what would do well, what would taste good and we put in a TON of things. I also learned that we didn’t eat some of those things really. My planting this year wasn’t as crazy and I went with things that we love to eat. I’ve tried to learn as much as I can about the whole thing and have a great book my best friend recommended me: Vegetable Gardeners Bible. I’ve also done a lot of reading on companion plants and which plants like to be next to one another (like peppers and tomatoes). We also have a herb garden next to the deck that had tons of herbs we weren’t cooking with so I didn’t go crazy on that this year either. Lots of my herbs came back so that was a nice surprise this year. We have a strawberry patch, the blueberry row and the mint gone wild patch also.
Our garden has: Spinach, lettuce green mixes, celery, carrots, few different types of onions, LOTS of peppers (both hot and mild), tomatoes (black cherry, grape cherry and 1 sweet Oregon) and our crookneck squash.
Our garden - looking towards the deck from the tomato & pepper side.
Besides the garden we’ve done a lot of other planting. I put perennials in the raised beds instead of bulbs. I don’t know what I was thinking putting bulbs in them last year but now these perennials should fill the beds in nicely. Hopefully they work out together or I’ll be transplanting things somewhere else.
The bed has yarrow, dianthus, columbine, hebe, Mexican oranges, salvia hot lips and Coreopsis..think that’s all.
We tore out some lavender plants from the front that just looked out of place along the hedge. I don’t know what they were thinking putting them there. They were unruly and seriously ugly there. We’ve been meaning to replace them and continue the hedge but I couldn’t figure out what type the hedge plants we already had were and I wanted it to match. Finally I found them and even Patrick tried to tell me they weren’t a boxwood when I was dragging him across the nursery. Sure enough, a match! We also bought a Yew to match the other Yew’s out front and hopefully with time it will hide the electrical box. It’s just nice to have more projects done!
You can see the small boxwood hedges just a little bit here but the yew is to the left hiding kind of behind the tree.
One of my favorite things is Mother’s Day and not just because I’m a mom now but because my present from my husband is my nursery trip for the annuals in my baskets and pots. I love picking out different flowers to put in my pots and baskets. This year I didn’t quite get to do it Mother’s day weekend because I spent that studying for exams. I did get my nursery trip in eventually though and all my stuff planted! They are just now really starting to bloom so I imagine in a few weeks they’ll really be filling in.
Have 2 of each of these out front. I had a thing for the purple/pink obnoxious colors this year.
I’m sure more pictures will be coming the blog way as the garden starts to flourish and the colors start to show….of course we need some sun for that to happen!
X-posted from Link to my blog away from LJ ~ http://mymindslost.com/boyswillbeboys.