Our second attempt at a garden

After a less than glorious year of gardening in 2010, we are back at it. I, at least, am determined to one day be good at growing food to eat! I'm sure it will take a few years. We composted some this fall and added some sand to our soil, so we think we are off to a better start with more nutrient-rich and better draining soil this year. We also learned a little about what we liked to grow and what didn't do as well. This year, I decided to grow the following things for the following reasons:

1. Lots of herbs - because they are easy, nice to have on hand and expensive to buy at the store. We've planted rosemary and thyme (perennials left from last year and growing too big for the garden plot!), sage, basil, parsley, cilantro, dill.

2. Tomatoes - because we love them and they are EXPENSIVE to buy. I cannot eat grocery store tomatoes because they only remotely resemble the flavor and texture of an actual tomato. So, while they are in season, I need to get as many as possible. We have 5 heirloom tomato plants: 2 cherry varieties and 3 full-sized ones. They are already MUCH bigger than they were last year at this point and we have a few small tomatoes on the vines.

3. Butternut squash - they are also expensive at the store (because they are so heavy), and are so versatile for cooking. I can freeze them easily, and have grand plans to make a monstrous batch of butternut squash ravioli this fall to freeze and enjoy this winter.

4. Carrots - because the kids love them and they are, theoretically at least, easy to grow.

5. Kale, mache and arugula - three delicious and highly nutritious lettuces that are easy to grow. These are cool season crops, so the spring crop is about done, but we'll replant in the fall. All three of them did pretty well and we still have lots of kale (more than we can eat).

6. Sunflowers - they are beautiful, fun, and we can eat those yummy nutritious seeds.

7. Onions - because our neighbor gave us the bulbs for free and you can never have too many onions! These have done well (or at least they appear to have done well from our above-ground perspective!).

Here is a picture when we first planted the garden (end of April):

And here is one from today. Lots of good growth! Hoping for more luck this year! (Two of the tomato plants I just planted this weekend, so they are still small, but the other three have about a month of growth already).

We also have 5 blueberry bushes with lots of fruit on them and a small gala apple tree. For some odd reason, the apple tree only has 2 apples on it... it's only 2 years old, so maybe next year will be more productive. We're considering buying a dwarf apple we can train to grow on our fence to cross pollinate this one...

Blueberry bushes: