2009 Garden: June Edition

We planted our garden this year specifically for fresh eating. With being pregnant and due in November, I didn't know how great I would feel and how much canning/freezing I would be able to do. I barely got any done last year when I was feeling 100%, so I figured we would just enjoy the fresh vegetables this year and give away any extra produce to neighbors and friends.

Our corn has been interesting this year. While it will be "knee high by the 4Th of July", that appears that it is the tallest it is going to get as it is already starting to tassel. We may not even get any ears out of it. Oh well, it has been fun to watch it grow! William has enjoyed asking me on an almost everyday basis if "his corn is ready to eat." I keep telling him that it hasn't even tasseled yet, so I suppose I will have to come up with a new excuse why it isn't ready to eat now that it is tasseling! There are five different pepper plants and they are doing okay, but not thriving this year. I hope to get a few peppers for fresh salsa at least from the plants.

Our 4 great tomato plants. They are growing great and will soon be too heavy for the wire mesh that is helping to hold them up. We have four different varieties of plants this year and unfortunately I cannot remember what any of them are called.

We have already started enjoying our fresh lettuce on sandwiches in the evenings. There are little flower plants around the lettuce, and I can't remember what those are called either. Sorry.

Our prolific green beans! I can hardly wait to steam up a huge batch for dinner and enjoy the crunch of fresh green beans. We planted double what we did last year and hopefully will be able to have green beans for almost every meal throughout the summer. We can't get enough!

Here is a wide shot of all four raised beds in our backyard. We have gotten so little rain this year that I have had to water the gardens at least once a week for every week since we planted them. I am still surprised at how green the grass is in the yard since the rain has been so scarce! When we moved into our house (5 years ago) there wasn't much grass in the backyard and what was there was weeds. It has definitely come a long ways since then and I absolutely love hanging out in the back yard watching my garden grow like my Great Grandpa Gene used to do!