A trip through the garden

I have had ridiculous amounts of fun learning how to garden this year.  I really didn't know if I would like it when we started.  I'd had a lot of pots of stuff on the patio, with varying amounts of success, but a garden is a little more of a commitment.

And it turns out I've really enjoyed it a lot.  I've picked a couple of zucchini, lots of lettuce and kale, and am getting ready to have an overwhelming amount of tomatos.

One thing I've got to get better at is spacing.  As you can see, it is a small jungle, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  You can't really see it from this shot, but there are all kinds of vines trailing over the fence and out the back of the garden.

Doesn't Yarbo look relaxed?

I kept planting more tomatos because they never looked like they were going to do anything, and I got very impatient (which I know must be quite a surprise....).  Eight tomato plants later, they are taking over about half of the garden.  Next year I will try to be more patient while waiting for them to grow.

We have lots of leafy things...

Lettuce

Parsley

Kale

We were supposed to have 12 plants of yellow string beans, but only 3 of them ever came up.  Those three are now overshadowed by the massive tomatos, as are the beets that are supposed to be growing. One of my bell peppers are making it, but they're just barely out of the reach of the tomatos.

Yellow beans (there are 2 more beans on another plant.  So sometime we'll have 4 beans with dinner...)

Sad little beet plants

Pepper

One of my favorite parts of the garden to watch grow is all the vine plants.  I truly should have had about 4 times the space for the plants that I have, but I'll know that for next year.  I planted cucumbers, spaghetti squash, zucchini, and yellow squash.  The plants are HUGE.

Tiny little cucumber

Aren't the cucumber flowers pretty?

The spaghetti plant is getting out of control, but I love how the tendrils curl so tightly around anything they touch

How many zucchini can you find? (I think there's 3 in the photo)

A squash blossom that hasn't opened yet

I also planted eggplant, but the plant that grew in that space hasn't produced any signs of an actual eggplant yet, so I'm not sure if it's really an eggplant, or a weed that has gotten ridiculously huge.  If it's really an eggplant, I'm kind of wondering when the vegetable will start appearing.  If it's not an eggplant....well, the size of the weed will be kind of embarrassing.  Time will tell!

Anyway, that's most of my garden.  I have a few other things growing there, but most of the rest of my plants are in containers on the front porch or the back deck, including a bunch of herbs.  

This fall, we have plans to add more garden space and raise the beds to make it nicer to look at and easier to work with, and we'll do more landscaping at the back of our yard then too.  In the meantime, my first-ever garden has been a lot of fun, and the vegetables I've picked so far have been so fresh and tasty!

Do you have any good gardening tips?  I'd love to hear them!