A RAINY START TO THE SUMMER
…not that I’m complaining! It’s been a while (life gets away from you sometimes, eh?) so I wanted to show you some updates from the garden this summer so far! While I’ve not made great progress on updating the blog, a lot has been done in the garden. The rain has kept everything happy and healthy, except for a few seeds I planted that were promptly swept away in a thunderstorm. Can’t win ‘em all I guess ;)
Let’s start with the vegetable garden, which has been a HUGE success!
June 16th
Were there bugs all up in my broccoli? Of course there were. Did I have to replant a few onion seeds? You betcha. Did one of my pepper plants not make it so I had to get one from Lowes? Sure did.
But I grew vegetables! Pulling carrots out of the ground is one of my new favorite activities. The potatoes and onions should be about ready to pop here soon in mid-July. And eating peas straight from the pod while doing a bit of weeding has made it all worth it. I mean, look at my first harvest!
Lettuce, broccoli, carrots, and peas from the end of June
The experience of vegetable gardening has been so much fun. In there now I have my tomatoes growing like crazy, a zucchini plant taking up way too much space but ah who cares, and I just started some flower seeds in the spot where the broccoli was.
The rest of the vegetable garden hasn’t had much work done other than a few planting zinnias and a Pinky Winky Hydrangea standard. The one side of the path is still completely grass and we probably won’t get to planting it until next year. However, if you have the chance to grow vegetables in your yard, give it a shot! It’s a very rewarding experience and doesn’t take too much effort (especially with the amount of rain we’ve been getting).
Now onto the new back yard beds that we created back in March….
For evergreen structure, I added two green mountain boxwoods flanking the main entry point into the yard. I think maybe adding an arbor in the future would be a lovely vertical element. I also wanted shrubs for winter structure as well, so I have my two re-homed bobo hydrangeas, a reblooming lilac, and a viburnum. I did add in some perennial veronica, bee balm, coreopsis, and lavender, and then sprinkled in some annual zinnias, dahlias (which I’ll attempt to store indoors over the winter), and gazania.
The addition of these two garden beds surrounding the patio gives the entire backyard more of a “rooms” feel. You have the patio for lounging, eating, and cat tenting, and then the small separation to the lawn for … lawn activities (?). My goal is to have the shrubs stay on the smaller size. The lilac and viburnum both get 3-6ft tall and wide but I’ll keep them trimmed down below 6ft. The remaining perennials and annuals still allow for sightlines into the lawn and woods beyond.
The only negatives about these new garden beds so far are 1. the huge storms we’ve been getting have pretty much washed away the mulch in this area, so we’re doing some brainstorming on how to keep that in place and 2. since this was lawn only a few months ago, there are plenty weeds and grass maintenance to keep up on. But that’s just a small price to pay when the new garden beds add so much beauty to our yard.
Those projects and the addition of a Ruby Falls redbud tree pretty much ate up my garden budget for the year so far, so other than popping in a handful of annuals in the front yard, not much else has been done. The backyard is filling up nicely with the perennials getting bigger each year. And the front yard is bursting with color with the annuals and perennials. The bees and birds have been loving it.
I’ll end this update with a few shots of the front yard garden from the first week of July…
I dream of having a plethora of pots lining my front stairs, but 4 will have to do this year. These are planted with yellow biden, Supertunia Royal Velvet, and a couple varieties of purple and yellow Superbells.
Colorful lantana backed by Daisy May daisies, being held up by grow-through flower supports (otherwise they flop over in the rain)
My absolute favorite coreopsis (I believe the variety is Zagreb) has spread multiple feet in the last 2 years and puts on a lovely yellow show in early to mid Summer. The name of the purple flowers is escaping me at the moment, but they are getting a bit choked out by the coreopsis and will need to be transplanted. And the dead rhododendron needs to be popped out as well!
Finally here are some pink phlox that the deer luckily didn’t get to this year, yellow coreopsis, and day lilies.
I hope you’re all doing well in the garden this year, beating the heat, and enjoying the break from hand-watering because of the lovely storms we’ve been getting. Happy summer!