Garden Update: Little Plants Are Growing!

Little plants are growing!  Vines are growing!  Trees are blooming!  Flowers are pretty!

One of the cool things about moving to this new house has been seeing all the things that were already planted that we get to enjoy now.  The previous pastor and his family did a lot of landscaping and planting, and I feel a bit spoiled that we get to just come take over.  We're trying to add to it and make it even better.

Let's start with the purely pretty things.  Last month the tulips were in full bloom.  They're mostly gone now, but now these have popped up.

There's still a few purple and yellow tulips on the other side of the front porch (there were also pink and orange a few weeks ago). 

They're just gorgeous!

On the side of the house are some other flowers, so we've been learning what they are as well.

In the backyard, the apple trees (2 different kinds) are flowering, which gives me hope for lots of apples for applesauce this fall.

We also inherited both a grape vine

and several raspberry bushes. Sorry for the weird picture angle, but the neighbors were out and I didn't want them to feel weird about me taking pictures.

So.

Everything up to this point in the blog post has been stuff that was already here.  Aren't we spoiled?

I showed you our tilled up garden plot a few weeks ago, and here's what it looks like today:

We bought several more plants at the garden center, so we now have the potential for watermelon, pumpkins, broccoli, peas, beans, onions, and tomatoes.  Some are doing better than others.  This is the year of trying a bunch of stuff and learning what works.

(broccoli)

(tomatoes in cages)

My favorite part is the strawberry plants.  We planted six of them, and while they're tiny right now, they're supposed to come back each year, so we are hoping to help them get nice and big!

Inside, we still have butternut squash, dill weed, some kind of lettuce, and a few more pepper, jalapeno, and tomato plants.  Those will be planted outside in the next week or so.  We still have some extra onion bulbs, which will probably get planted one per cup and take over the table in the window.  Might as well grow them, since we know we'll eat them!

We also got a parsley plant and a cilantro plant for me to keep inside.  The parsley is thriving!

The cilantro is not.

Most of the stalks wilted, so I picked them off to salvage the cilantro and dry it.  I'm trying to revive the remaining plant but I'm not too hopeful there.  At least we only paid about what I would have for one bunch of cilantro at the grocery store?

And finally, our bucket potatoes.

(Matthew's, mine, Jonah's, Jesse's)
We each picked a seed potato to plant.  We're having an unofficial competition to see who picked the best one.  Jesse's looks the biggest so far, but since we can't actually see the potatoes, we'll have to wait until fall to find out who picked the winner.

So that's our garden right now.  Honestly, growing things from little tiny seeds intimidates me, which is why I've let Jesse do pretty much everything so far.  I'm more comfortable with plants that are sturdy and close to harvesting, and then preserving everything afterwards.   Still, I'm really excited with the potential for all this yummy food!