What a Difference a Month Makes

This year has been a funny year for gardening. The winter was brutal and so some perennials died back a bit. We also had a super cool spring and so we got started a bit late on planting the veg.

Just a bit over a month ago, this is what our newly planted vegetable garden looked like:
 

And as of a few days ago, after a serious weeding, it looked like this:

There are teeny tomatoes on all of the tomato plants.  Tiny cucumbers are growing. I have already made one small lunch batch of pesto from backyard basil and have used dill in a salad made with farmer's market potatoes.  It's so great to be able to walk out to the backyard at dinner time to "shop" for ingredients we need.

Gardening is like magic.  I mean, it's hard work, I guess.  But after such a miserable winter, it's hard to believe that all of this green and growing and bounty will return.  And that it grows like weeds on top of that?  It makes me feel lucky and it makes me feel proud that we have been working this ground for seven years now, creating a bed that supports all of this life and food production.

As proof of that. . . as I was weeding the whole garden on Sunday, I thought, "Why don't we use gardening cloth to keep these weeds down?"  But once I was done weeding and could see the darkness and loamy-ness of the soil, I thought, "We worked hard to make that soil so rich and pretty.  I'm not covering that up."  I am a silly and vain gardener as it turns out.

Plus, new for 2014! Dan has made me three trellises for container gardening: 

 

Our veg plot is so small, that it's hard to give up space to large trailing plants like watermelon or winter squash.  So, this year, I'm growing those and summer squash in containers with the hopes of growing them vertically and training a number of them up on to the trellises.  It's just a side bonus that they will also cover up our boring gray garage for a few months.

I definitely got a late start on these, but squash grow so quickly that I'm not worried.  And those containers are jam-packed with organic potting soil and manure.  By next month, I expect them to all be two to three feet up the trellises. And I have dreams of late summer watermelon and winter squash dotting the trellis in tiny support hammocks.

Fingers crossed.