Garden - at last!

I finally am using a different computer and can upload pictures to it from my camera.  So, that means I'm back in business!  This morning I went out and took lots of pictures of our vegetable garden.  Our daughter and her family are living with us and SHE is a quintessential gardener.  So, we collaborate and things are going Very Well.

Okra - I've never grown it before.

 Tomatoes in wire fence cages with zucchini squash in the foreground

Do you see the sort of a trellis there?  That encloses the little neighbor girl's patch in our garden.  She is growing pumpkins (tied up on the right) onion, pole beans, cucumbers, cabbages and sweet potatoes!

Lacinto kale

Beets

Onions - red and yellow globe

Potatoes - with cardboard between the rows to help control the weeds

Down the middle is the sweet potato row.  The vines at the far end are bigger because they were planted several days earlier than the ones on this end.

"Three Sisters" garden.  This is an ancient Native American technique.  You plant corn, winter squash and pumpkins, and pole beans together.  The corn supports the pole beans.  The beans fix nitrogen for the corn, and the squash shades the ground.  We have 6 plots of it in there.

 Bi-color sweet corn

Closer look at beans growing up the corn.  By the way, this is flour corn for making masa.

Cabbage

Rhubarb.  I got 3 pickings off of it this year!

A cluster of tomatoes

Comfrey.  I transplanted it into the main garden.  It had been in the yard, but the apple trees were shading it too much.  It is thriving in its new location.

See the ferny stuff?  We dug up a large wild asparagus plant along the road, divided it in three and have it planted in the garden.  Maybe next year we'll have asparagus to eat!  I used to have it in the yard, but, again, there was too much competition.  Pay no attention to the weeds.  They will be mulched as soon as I can get more newspapers.

See?  A very kind and generous local farmer let us come get spoiled straw to use as mulch for free!  This is our second batch and we won't need anymore this year.

Staked tomatoes

Gourds growing up poles

 Green beans this side of the onion rows.  I picked a 5 gallon bucket full of green beans this morning, and will can them today.

The persimmon trees are loaded!

So far, this has been a marvelous gardening season.  After 2 or 3 years of grinding drought, this is so wonderful!  I hope you enjoyed the tour.