In the Garden

When we moved into our new house in February, we knew that there was a big garden hidden under the snow. This spring we had a big clean up day with John's parents and his sister Christi and her family and over the past couple of weeks it has warmed up enough to start planting. 

Here's the before picture:

Quite a tangled mess. 

And here's the after-the-clean-up:

All of the boxes were already there. On the right are raspberry canes that need some serious pruning that we'll do in the fall. 

And here are some pictures with plants and the trellises:

The round thing will be for strawberries. It's has a sprinkler in the top tier and a frame over it for netting. 

The triangular bed is mostly herbs. Off the top of my head: oregano, chives, green basil, purple basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, pineapple sage and dill. Along the trellis in the triangle are squash, peas and watermelon (cross your fingers for a late frost). In the other boxes are tomatoes (7-8 different kinds), tomatillos and ground cherries from Christi, cucumbers (straight and pickling), carrots, beets, bush beans, chamomile, feverfew, spinach, chard, dwarf sunflowers, and some other flowers. 

We got started a bit late this year because there was so much clean up and I put it off until we got a big crew together, so hopefully we'll have a good season. We'll do a good job cleaning up in the fall, and we'll get the raspberries under control, and next year will go better. We'll get more plants started inside the sunroom in the house and be on top of things. Special thanks to Christi for sharing some of her plants with us. She brought a number of the herbs, too. 

Behind the shed we found a bunch of old windows from when they put in the new ones and I think it would be fun to make a greenhouse, or at least some cold frames with them. I'd like to figure out a year-round gardening system. But for now, we have a good start!