Garden Love

The garden has been growing beautifully (most of it anyway) and I thought I'd share some garden love today. 

We have 4 types of beans growing, Blue Lake pole & bush, and then thanks to Tipper at Blind Pig and the Acorn we are testing Greasy Cut short pole beans and an heirloom Strike Snap bush bean (more about those two in another post).  Today I discovered that we have our very first bean (I didn't even realize it until I put this picture of what I thought was going to show you bean flowers and voila! a Blue Lake pole bean)!

The squash is also growing very well, especially the seeds planted in the new area of the garden (it didn't get any of our winter TLC or horse manure) but we used our compost to plant with. The squash in that section has many flower buds, and though the row in the older section of the garden are doing well, they are not nearly as big nor with as many flower buds. 

Funny thing, because we used compost we also have some surprises sprouting.  I'm not sure what this is, we think it may be cantaloupe...

 ...and we also have tomatoes sprouting, which is a good thing because the tomato seed and small plants we planted are struggling a bit.

This is the newer section with squash, and the watermelon is also doing well but slower growing (this is the area I mentioned that didn't get the TLC).  I also ran out of branches to mulch and this section needs some weeding, but it is actually doing quite well.

The 3 pictures below are from the older section of the garden...the first one is squash, lettuce (doing OK, only a few have actually grown well, but we have lettuce!) and the 2 types of beans I got from Tipper, which are doing well.  To the right of the beans are spinach and broccoli, each only having one or two sprouts and are struggling to grow...didn't have success with either of those last year either!

Here you can see the corn which is doing well, the pole beans nearest to you and the bush beans, and in between them is the tomatoes, which as I said, are struggling.  Behind the tomatoes and beans is our corn, which is doing quite well.

Our turnips, rutabaga and beats are doing pretty well, radishes not so well, and potatoes (closest to you in the photo) are also doing well.  I've also planted our True Potato Fruit Seeds and am waiting to transplant them, but we have 2 potato plants that sprouted from what we believe are seeds left in the ground from last year.  

All in all, we are happy with our progress.  To keep things moving in the right direction, we spent time weeding and building rustic bean poles and the typical tomato stakes.  We made the bean poles out of sticks and twine, (a little difficult to see here)...the beans need something to send their runners on to. 

This is how the runners will embrace the twine and keep the beans from laying on the ground. 

It's been good to get back into the garden, it's been almost 3 weeks since I've actually worked in the soil!  I am amazed and how much everything has grown in that short time (fortunately mother nature has been cooperative with a good combination of rain and sun) and I really enjoy this stage when everything is beginning to flower...feels like success!  Do you have a garden and if so, how is it growing?  I know lots of my Florida friends have already been enjoying the fruits of their labor!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise