It’s always amazing to me how quickly things sprout up in the spring and early summer. It seems like all it takes is a month to go from a nearly barren land to a yard bursting with green stuff and activity.
This photo was taken only two weeks ago:
And now look at it!
This is the same patch, just a different angle. We were amazed by the amount of growth in such a short time. All my hubby’s hard spring work is coming to fruition, and we are always thrilled to admire the plants’ development.
Tim went around photographing the other day, and I thought I’d steal his pictures and take you on a visual tour of what’s growing around here.
We’ve got some potted marigolds, and some growing throughout the garden. They’re good as a natural pest control. Plus they’re pretty.
Here’s our raspberries coming along:
The gigantic mint patch is thriving, as usual:
And the tarragon is doing well:
Here’s the kousa dogwood, which flowers for quite a long time before it puts out little edible berry-type fruit. (I know, I know, the chickens are out again. Our fencing has a hole in it. Sigh.)
Here’s an array of some of the lovely blooms throughout the flower beds:
And here are the main garden plots. The furthest, long, skinny bed holds corn, squash, and beans. The middle is the main garden plot that we established two years ago, expanded last year, and incorporated no-till beds into this year. The closest plot on the right is J’s first little garden. He helped to pick the plants, plan it with Dada, and plant the seedlings. Now he loves going out to see the progress of his plants. (“Mama! I have my first CUUUUcumber!”)
Speaking of that cucumber…
We’ve got beans coming in just about every bed (they’re inoculated to fix nitrogen around our heavy feeders); here they are near the sunflowers (which will hopefully serve as trellises in time):
And radishes bustin’ out! We’ve had a hard time getting perfectly formed radishes in years past, but this year the bed was prepped with tons of fall leaves that composted over the winter and were then mowed finely–the results have been excellent. The bed is so light and aerated: 
There’s kale growing tall:
We’ve got a bed full of squash, beans, and corn (the “three sisters”):
(We’ll be in zucchini up to our ears soon, I’m certain!)
The blueberries are coming- can you spy them peeking out?
And there’s lots more berry bushes lining the back ponds (they were already here, but we trellised them this year):
The elderberry bush is in bloom! (Lucky for us, there was already an established elderberry bush on our property! One of the wonderful things we didn’t know about until after we bought the house.)
We have nice tall second-year asparagus in one of our swales–next year or the year after we should be able to begin to harvest it. (You can see one of the several trees we recently planted near it–this one is a plum). 
The quince is forming nicely (maybe it will finally be a full crop!): 
And the apple trees are putting out a lot of baby apples too! We’ve been working hard to prune them into good health and it looks as if this year it may be paying off.
There’s a lot more growing, but these are just some of the seasonal highlights. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much with all of those photos… It’s just that I get so excited each year when it all starts coming in.
We are looking forward to the continual harvest over the next several months. 🙂 What’s growing in your garden?
Beautiful garden and flowers! Your asparagus looks very impressive, too. Happy gardening!
I grew green beans and sunflowers together a few years ago, not thinking the beans would use the sunflowers as a trellis! I had to put my 4 year old on my shoulders to get the beans!!
We are growing lots of tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, potatoes, cucumbers, beets, garlic and edamame! Plus we have cherry, peach, apple and pear trees!
Love this time of year when everything is so green. And full!
Cute, I could see us having to do the same! We shall see how tall ours grow. Your garden sounds delicious! We’ve never done garlic or edamame- maybe those will have to be crops for next year! Happy growing. 🙂