A garden in bloom!

Well it's the beginning of June and our garden is starting to produce the goods! 

As you can see, our star veggie right now is the squash. We've already picked about 8 big ones and there are plenty still growing. 

The plants themselves are huge as well! They took up all the space I gave them, and a good portion of the space I gave the cucumbers!

The next big producer is the beans:

The plants that survived my dog trampling them have been so heavy with beans that they fall over! 

And the beans that survive my kids eating them fresh have been cooked or frozen and they are quite delicious. We'll definitely be doing beans again next year. 

So far the corn has been all show. It's tall and wonderful looking but none of the corn is big enough to eat yet. I'll brag about how delish they are in a couple of weeks though, don't worry.

Speaking of having promise- look at these tomato plants! Wyatt is 4' and they're catching him fast. Just this morning we discovered our first green baby tomatoes too. 

We also saw our first flowers on two of our pepper plants. 

Although now that I see the plants. I won't be giving them nearly as much space in the future. Hopefully the three big plants we have deliver enough peppers for Matt to enjoy (I'm not really a pepper person). 

Finally, we now have a couple pickle-sized cucumbers! 

Once we get a few more, we're going to venture into the world of pickling and canning. 

I'll let you know how that goes! 

All in all my garden is doing great! There are too many weeds, not enough time to weed, and a few squished plants from the dog and the kids but it's growing wonderfully and we love picking our dinner and teaching the kids about nature.

Green Thumb & Death Paw

Matt and I decided a few months ago that we were going to plant a garden this year. We have a large raised garden that was just screaming to be tended to. No seriously, it needed some attention in the worst way. 

This was AFTER we already cut down the small bushes of weeds and AFTER I pulled out all of the larger weeds. As you can see, clearly there was more work to be done. 
So we spent another afternoon weeding, then an afternoon tilling and finally we were able to plant!

Then the worst part; the wait. The garden looked like this for about a week and a half before I finally saw some signs of life! And yes, you do see five garbage bags and our 'natural waste' bin full of weeds that we pulled from the garden! 
After weeding out the obvious grasses and junk we saw our first sprouts. I say we because I even got Matt in the garden to help weed! 

It may have lasted all of 5 minutes before it turned into this-- 

but it was a contribution :) 
Anyways, after two weeks of work we had all of these little plantlets to show for it:

Corn

Beans

Squash

Cucumbers

Possibly tomatoes? haha not 100% on that one!
We haven't seen any signs of life from our bell peppers or habenero peppers yet, but it does say that their germination period is longer and the habeneros wont germinate until the soil warms up.. So hopefully we'll see something soon!

That is.. If we can keep Winny from doing what she did today.. 
Paws. Of. Death. 

Do you SEE that crater in my garden!?!? I was gone for TWO HOURS and she wreaked havok on my cucumbers and squash! I have no idea what possessed her to dig halfway to China; she spends all warm afternoons outside and we've never had an issue with her in the garden OR with her digging! 

I'm no gardening pro, but I don't think my cucumbers and squash are going to make it...

Look at that poor thing! 
I tried to repair the damage  then watered the garden in case something is clinging to life but it's safe to say we will be installing some chicken wire, netting or something to protect the next set of seeds we plant. Until then; Winny is in jail. 

No treats for the prisoner, even if she does look cute in dog-jail.