Garden--April Edition

I've been talking about my garden lately so I figured I should dedicate a post to it. These pictures are as far as I've gotten so far.

This is a wide shot of the whole back garden. You can see the red rain barrel on the left, and the homemade compost bin on the right (behind the grassy mound).

Left side of the garden contains (front to back & left to right): snap peas, lavender (behind the pallets in this pic), oregano, mint, rhubarb, potatoes (these came back from last years that I thought I dug up all of), lettuce, spinach, more rhubarb, and strawberries. The leaf pile on the right is what I use as mulch in the winter to cut down on weeds; it hasn't made it's way to the yard waste bin yet. Update: I'm excited that a few stalks of rhubarb are ready to pick! Mmm...rhubarb crisp :)

In front of the raised bed is garlic in the black pots, lemon balm (digging this up this year since it spreads like a weed), carnation, and blueberry (this poor little bush is getting a partner after reading that you NEED 2 in order to produce fruit). The raised bed currently has chives and asparagus. To the right is raspberries, and in the pot are strawberries. The dirt strip on the left has kale, swiss chard, and carrots.  You can see the raised bed needs A LOT of weeding before starts go in later. Also, I'm working on getting a fence to tie in the raspberries or else they fall over when fruit gets too heavy; the plan is to have the raspberries go along the raised bed and about a foot wide. We got quite a bit of fruit last year just from the small patch you see here.

This is the small patch of garden in front of the grassy mound that was originally dug out for corn, but works well for other things like acorn squash, too. Right now I have cabbage on the right, and radishes on the left. Update: I have to admit this picture is a few days old, and as of yesterday the radishes have started to sprout! This makes me happy because I planted extra radishes to eat the sprouts, like bean sprouts you buy at the store, in salads and on sandwiches. :)

This is my backyard flower garden next to my rabbit cages. It hasn't been weeded yet, but needs it badly as you can tell. Besides dandelions I have vinca (the purple flowers that makes pretty ground cover), lavender, an iris, and assorted dahlias (my favorite!). I'm not sure what it's called that the fencing is around, but if it gets too tall it falls on top of my dahlias so I fence it in to prevent that.


So there you have it...my garden. I'll take more pics to update y'all once things start growing, starts get planted, weeding is done, etc. I hope this year's garden does better than last year. :/