The beginning of the garden

We've had our garden all planted for about about a week and a half, and so far everything is progressing nicely. I'll do an update in a few weeks, but before I can do any updates, we have to have a starting point. And here's where our garden started:

Ugh. Dandelions, creeping charlie, and dead stuff from last year. And I think this is even after I had done a bit of "clean-up."

And here we are after lots of weeding and tilling. (Except for the back flower patch by the alley. We tackled that the day after this photo.) We decided this was good enough and laid down some black fabric-y weed barrier. Then we added all the cages and towers and got to planting.

Starting in the bottom left and going clockwise, we have rhubarb, cauliflower, cucumbers and Swiss chard, beans, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. And of course the strawberries in the corner.

Our chicken-wire fencing and stakes are looking a bit worse for wear. This is the third summer they've been in the garden, so they're a bit weathered and wobbly. We had originally planned to redo the fence this year, but we got such a late start that we didn't want to spend time messing with the fence. Once the garden is filled with vegetables, you won't even notice the fence, right?

Here is the cauliflower. We haven't tried growing cauliflower before, and from what we've read it can be a bit sensitive. This is cheddar cauliflower, so it will be orange instead of white. Side note: The rhubarb, to the right of the cauliflower, is huge. Some of the leaves have to be at least two feet wide.

Here are the cucumbers, which will grow up the trellis, and the Swiss chard growing below. In the background are the eggplant (by the upper left corner of the trellis) and then three tomatoes: San Marzano, Mr. Stripey (my sister found that plant at the farmer's market and had to get it) and then black plum.

And here we have our two bean towers. We planted a variety of different beans, so we should have lots of pretty flowers and, if the past is any indication, thousands of beans. Behind the bean towers and to the left are three peppers (tangerine dream, chocolate sweet pepper and lady bell). Near the center of the photo is the eggplant again.

This is a view from the back of the garden.

And here's the flower patch by the alley. In between the hostas we planted prairie blazing stars, and on either end we planted echinacea. We also planted sunflower seeds all along the fence. There are a few milkweed plants growing in this patch, too, although we had to pull out several that were covered with aphids.

There you have it! It was a lot of work, but now that everything is in the garden, I'm glad we did it. Thanks for stopping by!