The May Garden

When we planted our garden this spring (early to mid March) I knew I was going to have to just be grateful for whatever our garden produced this year. During our normal planting time Carl was in Manila, Philippines with MetroWorld Child which meant that the beds weren’t prepared quite like we like them because our goal was just to get the transplants in the ground before the heat came. Spring is by far our busiest time of year as a family and this spring Gabriel graduated from high school which made it even busier, so I knew not much “tending” would be done to the garden once we got the transplants in. Lastly, my brother in law is very sick and I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with my sister, supporting her while she cares for her husband. 

Actually, I almost didn’t plant a spring/summer garden but I just couldn’t, I had to plant and I’m so glad I did. My garden is my happy place, even when it’s full of weeds. There will never be a perfect gardening year, I’ll never have all the time I want to have to devote to my garden and yet, there is beauty and provision among the weeds. I wanted to celebrate that with you today. 

This is the long view of one side of the garden. I love, love, love my cattle panel arches. The walkways need to be mowed but our front yard get mowing priority ;-). 

This is the crazy volunteer cherry tomato plant that came up in our front yard last fall. We dug it up and put it in the garden. We had such a mild winter that we had a few tomatoes all winter long. Now, we’re picking handfuls a day. 

These are celebrity tomatoes. A sweet friend had more tomato starts than would fit in her garden so she save me the extra. She started hers about 6 weeks before I started mine as she has a greenhouse and I don’t. Celebrity tomatoes are huge producers but they are a hybrid – just so you know. 

Carl spent some time this week tying up our tomato plants and adding more red Christmas ornaments to the cages. We buy them every few years when they are on clearance and use them to trick birds into thinking our tomatoes aren’t any good. 

All our heirloom tomatoes that I started are still green. One thing that is interesting is that the celebrity tomatoes have leaf mold on them but the heirlooms don’t. It could just be that the celebrity tomatoes are older and bigger but it’s something that I’m going to try to watch. 

The cattle panel arch at it’s best. These green bean vines are probably 8′ long but aren’t all bunched up like they normally are. The green beans are so easy to pick this year!

The herb garden is looking quite lovely – and weedy. I’m excited for the calendula, lavender and fennel to fill in. 

I’ve been a member of Seeds of the Month Club for quite a while and I love getting my envelope each month with the surprise seeds in it. There is usually some mainstream seeds and then also some more “exotic” seeds. These white cucumbers are from my Seeds of the Month Club. They taste great!

Only a few people in my family like cucumbers so I only plant a few plants. These are really pickling cucumber but I just let them get bigger and we eat them like salad cucumbers. 

This is the kale we planted last fall and we’re still eating off of it. I’ve been picking it and dehydrating it to make kale powder. I seeded basil in this bed also and it’s coming up and filling in. 

Our summer squash bed was doing so well. We’re still picking zucchini – some of them are quite large – and preserving it but our yellow squash is gone. 

We’re struggling with powdery mildew….

and vine borers. We’re doing our best to treat for them but it’s hard to do that when you’re not home. I am going to try to plant a fall crop and see what happens. 

And we have a melon! Last year our melon area got so much water and grew so many weeds that the melons all rotted. I’m hoping that this year we can be a little more diligent. 

Last year we lost all of our peach trees so we’re having to start over this year. We planted this tree in January and while I know I’m “supposed” to remove all the flowers the first year so it doesn’t fruit – I just can’t ;-). There are 9 peaches on this tree. I can’t wait until they are ripe! 

Our first pomegranate! This year we have about  5 small fruits on the tree which is 5 years old. I so hope that they mature. 

And grapes! Two of our four table grape vines have small clusters on them. When they got planted the guys didn’t mark where they planted each variety so I have no clue which ones these are. I’m hoping I can figure it out once the grapes are ripe since I wrote the varieties in my gardening notebook. 

And this was our harvest one day this week. We’ve had quite a bit of rain, although not nearly as much as last year, and some of the onions were just mush. We peeled, chopped and froze the onions, grated and froze the zucchini, gave most of the cucumbers to friends, froze the tomatoes, cooked the green beans for dinner and froze the strawberries to use in smoothies. 

Tell me what’s happening in your May garden. I’d love to celebrate with you. 

Thanks for sharing with your friends!