Killing me salty - taking down the stumps

Drilling the stumps

When I moved into my new house, there was an intimidatingly large "sticker bush" on the second lot against the fence. This holly bush was not so jolly and reached at least 8 feet both in height and circumference. I have had more than enough experience fighting with these plants in the past, and the girth on this thing had me afraid that it would take over the yard if I didn't get a handle on it. Like, this fall.

Daniel was kind enough to take down the bush with a reciprocating saw. Seeing its remains in the yard made it look even more ginormous so we ended up taking it to the yard waste dump, even though all the branches barely fit in the back of Dan's Toyota Tundra (which is also ginormous and a gas hog - more on replacing the truck in a later post). Fortunately, the yard waste dump is only about 2 miles away, so we covered the load (and by we, I mean, he) and drove slowly to prevent lining the streets of Roslyn with evil, horrible, spiny leaves and branches along the way.

Holy stumps!

I didn't want the darn thing to regrow, so we contemplated a few different options to kill the stumps and prevent it from reaching altitude again. I didn't want to use chemicals like Roundup, so Dan suggested we drill holes in the stumps and pour in salt.

Apparently, this is actually a thing and there are quite a few articles you can find online about using Epsom salts to promote stump death. I won't go into too many details here, but I will report back as to how effective this method is. Basically, we drilled holes in the stumps, poured in salt, wet the holes to promote more absorption and covered the stumps with more salt. I'll repeat the salting process again in a few weeks.

I won't know how well this works until probably the spring, but I have hope that this will work. If it does, then it will be easier to dig out the dessicated root system and be done with it once and for all. Have any of you tried killing stumps using this method? If so, did it work for you?

Dwarf Almond for Urban Spaces

This spring I purchased and planted a few new dwarf fruit and nut trees to replace some other trees and plants that just weren't producing. I finally decided to pull out some pear trees that always suffered from trellis rust and never produced any fruit, in spite of all the pruning and perseverating over.

In place of one of the pear trees, I planted a dwarf almond - something I've wanted to have for years, but just couldn't find something suitable for an urban space. Well, the Nikita's Pride almond tree, developed in the Ukraine, does great in both small spaces as well as in cold environments. It will grow about 10 - 12 feet tall (although I'll keep it smaller) and is hardy to -20 degrees F. They bloom at the same time as peach trees, which helps avoid damage by last frosts.

These dwarf almonds are partially self-fertile. Another reason I bought this tree was in the hopes of making more of my own almond milk, which I started making earlier this year. Buying bulk organic almonds can be pretty cost prohibitive for making milk.

The Nikita's Pride is prized for their profuse, pinkish-white, fragrant flowers. I haven't had it long enough to flower and produce anything yet, but it's grown quite a huge amount just over the summer. When I planted it, it was about 2 feet tall. It's about 6 feet tall now. Hopefully we'll see some flowers on it next year. I have to say, I'm pretty excited about this tree.

Do you have any nut trees growing on your property?

Collard Greens Gratin. With Bacon. And Cornbread.

Collard greens gratin

We're getting to that time of year where the collard greens I over-planted decide they want to produce more than we can possibly and reasonably eat (apparently four plants is too much for two people and the kids aren't interested). So, what is one to do? Turn those giant leaves into a meal, that's what.

I occasionally pick up this magazine called Southern Cast Iron (where I got this recipe from) which, I hate to admit, I really love. It pairs cast iron with a lot of garden-centric meals that tend to be not so much on the lighter end of the spectrum. But, then again, pork fat is good for you, right?!

Anyway, this recipe is a great combination of lots of collard greens, onions, garlic, milk, cheese and a little bacon. Oh, and some cornbread. Which really seals the deal for me. You cook it on the stove top in a cast iron skillet, but it gets baked in the oven for a really amazing, golden, crunchy finish. It's a nice alternative to the standard sauteed greens and it's a meal in itself.

If you're looking for an inexpensive cast iron skillet, we love our 12 inch Lodge pre-seasoned skillet that we use not only for making things like this, but for making cornbread as well.

Ingredients

1. 11⁄2 pounds chopped collard greens, stems removed
2. 6 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 2-inch pieces
3. 1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
4. 3 cloves garlic, minced
5. 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
6. 2 cups whole milk
7. 1 cup shredded sharp white Cheddar cheese, divided
8. 1 teaspoon kosher salt
9. 1⁄2 teaspoon ground mustard
10. 1⁄8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
11. 1⁄2 cup crumbled cornbread

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add collard greens; cook for 4 minutes. Immediately drain, and rinse with cold water. Drain again; squeeze dry.
3. In a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon; let drain on paper towels, reserving drippings in skillet.
4. Add onion and garlic to skillet. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Stir in flour; cook for 1 minute. Gradually stir in milk; cook, stirring constantly, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Add 3⁄4 cup cheese, salt, mustard, and red pepper. Add collard greens, stirring until combined. Top with bacon, cornbread, and remaining 1⁄4 cup cheese.
5. Bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

What's your favorite way to cook greens?

*Warning - this post contains a link to an affiliate program that might make me money, wherein I use said $ for giveaways and suchlike.

Raspberry Plants for Small Spaces

Some of our fall raspberries earlier this week, right before I stuffed them all in my mouth...

This year our thornless Raspberry Shortcake plants produced like crazy. They are producing a small fall crop as well. I was really tempted to plant a third plant earlier this year, but the two I have now were producing so much I didn't want to overdo it!

If you have a small yard, these are great raspberries plants to give a try. Not only are they not poky, but they are self-fertile, only grow 2 - 3 feet tall and are hardy down to USDA zone 5. They will work well in containers on a patio or even on an apartment deck. Just make sure they get enough water.

I know this sounds like a freaking sales spiel, but of all the random trees, plants, vines, etc. that I've attempted to grow (and cursed, killed or ripped out) over the years, this is one of the few ones I've been really pleased with.

Do you grow any berries in your garden? What's your favorite? Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, snozzberries...?

*Warning - this post contains a link to an affiliate program that might make me money, wherein I use said $ for giveaways and suchlike.

Fall Garden Roundup 2016

Our fall garden is plugging along quite nicely. If anything, I'm getting a little tired of growing food and am itching for the garden to go to bed for the year. I'm looking forward to a winter's rest and where I can ignore the weeding and maintenance for a while.

But, I still have a lot of vegetables coming our way. We're still getting a lot of green beans, lettuce, green onions, collards and the occasional tomato and cucumber. I've got a handful of raspberries and a lot of blackberries still on the plants.

I've just finished my last plantings of the year - I put in the garlic and fava beans last week. I am, however, debating throwing some shallots in as well but that will depend on whether I get around to it.

Here's everything that's currently growing/producing:

• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Basil
• Swiss chard
• Pac choi
• Green onions
• Carrots
• Radishes
• Rattlesnake pole beans
• French green beans
• Collards
• Parsley
• Russian kale
• Broccoli
• Romaine
• Red lettuce
• Beets
• Chives
• Oregano
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Fava beans
• Garlic

I planted a few new fun fruit trees this year, but that will have to wait for another post!

Are you done gardening for the year or do you still have fruits and vegetables growing in your garden?

What's growing In the garden - May 2015

I have gotten a really late start in planting my food garden this year, but I'm finally making some progress after a few weeks of weeding and planning. I know it's always fun to see what other people have growing, so I thought I'd compile a full list for you.

So, to make a long story short, here's what I've got planted and growing so far in my Seattle urban backyard:

Fruit
Sweet cherries
Pie cherries
Columnar apples - Golden Sentinel and Scarlet Sentinel
Mini dwarf Honeycrisp apple
Pear - 2 varieties: I finally have my first pear this year (damn rust)
Blueberries
Raspberries
Blackberries - I pulled out one bush as I get waaaay too many berries every summer
Pineberries - kind of like white strawberries that taste like pineapples
Strawberries
Plums - Hollywood
Grapes - 3 varietals - not great for eating, but good for jelly!
Rhubarb
Arbequina olive
Lime (indoors)

Vegetables
Onions
Leeks
Garlic
Green onions
Green lettuce
Red lettuce
Green beans
Shelling peas
Collard greens
Sweet corn
Yellow summer squash
Cucumbers
Asparagus

Herbs
Rosemary
Oregano
Lavender
Thyme
Italian flatleaf parsley
Cilantro
Sage
Chives
Bay

Other
Chickens (2) - my old ladies are still producing about a half dozen eggs a week

To be planted / transplanted this weekend
Carrots
Pumpkins
Corn
Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
Watermelon
Cantaloupe


Phew! I think that's it. I still have a 4' x 4' raised bed of space to do some more planting in a few weeks. How is your garden going so far this year? Anything producing yet or is it still too cold?

Life in the Garden - August 2014

Since I post a little here and there about what I've got growing on our urban farmstead, I thought it would be helpful to give you a run down of everything I've got growing, foodwise, on our less than 1/10th of an acre in Seattle.

Fruits:
Blackberries
Raspberries
Blueberries
Strawberries
Apples
Pears (haven't yet produced anything)
Cherries
Plums
Grapes
Figs (don't really produce anything)
Lime (indoor)

Vegetables:
Asparagus
Rhubarb
Artichoke
Leeks
Green Onions
Brussels Sprouts
Green Beans
Shelling Peas
Onions
Radishes
Lettuce
Pac Choi
Parsnips
Carrots
Beets
Rutabaga
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Swiss Chard
Slicing Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Pumpkins
Bell peppers
Hot peppers

Herbs/Flowers:
Basil
Rosemary
Lavender
Sage
Chocolate Mint
Oregano
Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
Cilantro
Thyme
Black Oil Sunflowers
Calendula
Lemon Verbena
Echinacea
Tea

Eggs:
3 Chickens

I think that's it! I'm sure I'm forgetting something. When I get around to it I'll either take some more pictures or make a video tour, showing what's what.

Fall Vegetable Gardening: What to Plant in August

What to plant now for eating in the Fall

Around the Pacific Northwest, planting for a fall vegetable garden really needs to be done by mid to late July, however there are still some edibles you can plant now for some tasty fall eating.

I've had a couple conversations with friends and neighbors in the last week about what to plant now to keep their garden growing so I figured I'd make a post on what to plant in August for a fall garden.

I know it's the middle of summer and even thinking about planting for fall food crops in the middle of all the beans, cucumbers and tomatoes sounds insane but, if you're like me, and you wait until the end of August or early September to get around to it, you'll be too late. So, consider this a friendly reminder!

This is kind of it, for the most part. The only other things I'll be putting in the ground over the next few months will be more lettuce. And garlic and fava beans for next year.

Before you get too far along, now's also a good time to add some organic fertilizer to your already established edibles to keep them going.

And remember, since it's so warm and dry in August (even in rainy Seattle), you'll want to make sure you keep any transplants or seeds well watered.

Plant from starts (still available in some nurseries):

• broccoli
• cabbage
• cauliflower
• brussels sprouts
• kale
• green onions

Plant from seed:

• lettuce
• spinach
• radishes
• arugula
• pac choi/bok choy

It's probably too late at this point, but I'm still sowing:

• parnsips
• turnips
• beets
• rutabaga

What are you planting now for a fall garden in your neck of the woods? I love hearing about who's growing what in other areas of the country. One of my Facebook readers from California is playing around with papaya starts!

Neighborhood Birds Planted My Sunflower Garden

Last December I went a little nuts with backyard bird watching (well, in my case it was the front yard). I had read the book, The Urban Bestiary, and dove head first into paying more attention to the neighborhood critters and appreciating them more than just flying "little brown jobs".

I would spend at least 15 minutes in the morning before work meditating and staring out the front window, watching all the bird action with the multiple feeders I put out. I'm sure the passers-by in our neighborhood thought I was nuts and, every Wednesday, the garbage man waved at me as he did his rounds. It got so embarrassing that when I heard his truck I would throw myself to the floor below the windowsill so he wouldn't see me sitting there, staring out the window like an old lady waiting to yell at the neighbor kids.

Anyway, over the intervening months I have alternated between different types of birdseed, but I used quite a bit of black oiled sunflower seeds right around the time we put down a bunch of mulch in the front yard. The sunflower seeds were quite a mess because of all the shells but, lo and behold, a few weeks after mulching, we noticed a bunch of little plants growing underneath the feeder.

I was going to pull the little plants up because they looked like weeds, but my husband insisted that we keep them. And, I'm glad we did. Because now we have an amazing sunflower garden growing by the front window. A lot of people comment on the sunflowers and are interested to learn how they got there.

Nothing like a little free work by my birdy friends. The nice thing about this little experiment is that when the seed heads are ready, the birds get to eat the fruits of their labor. I added back the sunflower seeds to the bird feeder recently so we'll hopefully have another round for fall.

Have you had bird feeders "accidentally" or on purpose seed a flower patch for you? Were they sunflowers or something else?

Hoop Houses for Fall

I was planning on doing the last book club post for today but I'm sick and I spent a couple hours in the ER yesterday with my mom, so I just don't have the energy. Soon, though. I promise.

In the meantime, I thought I'd show you a picture of the hoop houses that I have set up for fall. The following picture is looking through two raised beds with floating row covers. They are set up over the top of irrigation tubing that's secured by short pieces of rebar. I've got 3 more raised beds that are planted with fall veggies (one with a hoop house over it).

In the bed in front, I've got:

* Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
* Swiss Chard
* Beets
* Carrots
* Winter Romaine Lettuce
* Brussels Sprouts

In the bed in back, I've got:

* Winter Romaine Lettuce
* Red Bunching Onions
* Mixed Lettuce n Greens

Against the fence in the far back are some of my grape vines. Here's a picture of the grapes growing. This is the first year they've produced. I don't think they'll ripen to the red color they should be.

The other beds hold variations of Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, chard, red bunching onions and carrots. I've had an infestation of cabbage worms and ended up pulling some things. You can see some of the damage in the first picture, but it's really the other beds that have the most damage.

I just planted next year's garlic and fava beans. Our strawberries and blackberries are still (slowly) producing as well as other herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, chives).

So, even though I feel like the main growing season is over, we still have a bunch to look forward to. That and the steady supply of eggs.

Do you have any fall vegetables still growing strong?

This post is part of this week's Homestead Barn Hop

Pumpkin Fail 2011

This spring, I had 30 gorgeous Rouge Vif d'Etamps pumpkin plants that I grew from seed last February. I grew them under our new grow light operation, made sure they got watered and didn't get leggy or funky. They grew into beautiful pumpkin starts. And then I proceeded to screw things up from there.

I was hoping to create a new pumpkin patch in one of our beds in the backyard. I dutifully moved the starts outside to harden them off and then my back went out on me while I was digging up and preparing other parts of the backyard for planting.

Since I was incapacitated, I couldn't prepare the future pumpkin patch area. So, I waited. In the meantime, the pumpkin plants got slightly ignored and maybe not watered as often. May turned into June turned into July and, just as I almost gave up on them, I decided to plant them in some newly made space in our regular vegetable beds.

It took a while for them to recover. But, they did and eventually they started blooming and we got a lot of flowers and a lot of little pumpkins growing. Unfortunately, it was too late in the season for them. So, instead of getting this:

We got this:

They are like large grapefruit. Sigh. At least I can buy some "real" ones at our local nursery for processing. They make fantastic pumpkin puree for all sorts of cooking and baking.

Short of hiring someone to help me out, I don't think I could have done anything differently. But, to be sure, I won't be making that mistake again if I can help it.

Did you grow pumpkins this year? What kind and how did they fare?

This post is part of this week's Homestead Barn Hop and An Oregon Cottage's Tuesday Garden Party!

Post Harvest Blues

The tomato plants have been pulled. The last of the zucchinis are safely stowed in the freezer. And, the rest of summer's bounty is but a memory. Sure, the ground is being prepared for garlic and fava beans and the hoop houses are still working their magic on the chard, lettuce and carrots but, for the most part, the main season is over.

For those of you who use gardening as therapy, working the soil, tending your plants and enjoying the sunshine when times get tough, post harvest blues can set in.

I, personally, switch gears to baking, sewing, knitting and other projects that make me feel like I'm still producing something. But that doesn't mean I still don't gaze longingly to the backyard, plotting next year's crops and looking forward to another year of fresh fruits and vegetables from just outside.

So, what do you do between the last of the crops and when the seed catalogs start arriving in January, reigniting dreams of another year of voluptuousness in the garden? Do you immediately start planning or put everything aside?

September Strawberries

Our day neutral strawberries weren't producing anything in June. Or July. Or really even August. But now that summer has finally started in Seattle (as of the first week of September) our strawberry plants are going crazy. I've been picking almost a cup of berries a day and there are still a ton of green ones on the plants. If this warm weather holds out, we'll be looking at more strawberries (and blackberries, for that matter) for weeks to come!

Top 5 Biggest Food Gardening Mistakes

As the main gardening season starts wrapping up, I thought I'd look back on some of the things that didn't work out for me. Or, rather, due to my own negligence, I ended up with subpar, dead, or unfruitful crops.

1. Not watering enough - Sometimes I get a bug in my britches and plant a ton of vegetable starts, water them well and then accidentally forget about them. They generally still survive when I remember to water them again (no, I don't have no fancy irrigatin' system) but they have a rough start and don't do as well as they should.

2. Not thinning - I really can't bring myself to thin out the plants as they mature, which just ends up stunting all of the plants.

3. Forgetting to fertilize - I started out the season all gung ho, making sure I was adding in my stinky fish fertilizer and then, well, I completely forgot to continue somewhere around the end of June. Oops.

4. Letting things bolt - Instead of staying on top of plants and actually eating them, I waited too long, thinking they would last. Instead, the next time I looked at them (broccoli, I'm talking to you, fuckers) they flowered, went to seed or otherwise stretched into the stratosphere in an inedible hard stalk that even the chickens ignored.

5. Not getting things in the ground at the right time - I diligently had my vegetable starts growing in the basement, doing extremely well. But, then I dropped the ball when it came time to get them in the ground. I had grandiose plans for new space, but then didn't have time (or back strength) to prepare the ground for planting. As a result, my tomato plants and all 29 of my precious pumpkin plants were the losers.

Each year, I do similar if not slightly different stupid things but eventually I'll learn. I hope.

What are your biggest gardening mistakes? Do they sound awfully similar to mine?

Random garden shots

We had a pretty uneventful weekend. I didn't get some fall planting done that I wanted to because of being busy. But we did end up going to the Ballard p-patch Art in the Garden again this year. I bought some earrings from a local artist, we bought some flowers grown in the p-patch (see picture below) and generally just poked around.

Sunday we took Paco to the off-leash dog park and I let the chickens do some free ranging of their own. Our sunflowers are finally producing as are the blackberries and we finally, after 3 years, have some grapes growing on our vines!

On the way home from the dog park, we stopped by Top Pot for some coffee and donuts. Paco was pretty pooped out from playing. But not too pooped to pose.

In the garden... Summer 2011

Even though it's early July, everything is running weeks behind in the garden. Our strawberries are finally getting ripe and our cherries are probably a week or two away from being edible. Our greens are doing well, but things like cucumbers and zucchinis are still tiny and look very unpromising.

I finally got around to planting our three tomato plants yesterday. Two of them had some fruit on them already even though they were dying on our deck. Hopefully they'll survive the transplant. They all are early or ultra early varieties.

I also finally got around to planting my myriad of Cinderella pumpkin plants. I don't have high hopes for these because generally pumpkins don't like being transplanted and they've been suffering with the tomatoes on our deck. At the least, they'll do better being in the ground than in tiny containers.

I clipped all our garlic scapes and put them in a glass like a floral arrangement. I got the idea from the blog, The Art of Doing Stuff,(see picture at top). We've been eating them with our Swiss chard and kale. What do you like to do with your scapes?

I also clipped a bunch of lavender to dry for future culinary uses. We have a bunch of weeds that I generally pull up every year, but didn't get around to it this year. It turns out that they are some sort of day lilly with beautiful flowers, so I clipped those as well to enjoy inside.

Our potato plants are as good as dead. I will go rummaging around in the potato bins this week to see what's going on. Also dead is our mint. I have a black thumb when it comes to mint. It started off promising and then I think they just got too dried out or something.

In any case, it's hit or miss out there!

Photo courtesy of The Art of Doing Stuff.

Growing potatoes in containers

This is a cross post from my blog over on Mother Earth News.

I've been growing potatoes in bins in our backyard for five years now. I started off using large, plastic storage containers that I drilled holes in for drainage and filled with a few inches of compost. As the potato plants grew, I "hilled" them with more soil.

Unfortunately, I have been less than attentive over the years and generally left the potato plants to get a little too tall before hilling them, which just meant that I probably wasn't getting the optimum yield. Last year, I didn't even really bother with getting potato "seeds" from the nursery and just let what was leftover in the bins grow. Needless to say, we hardly got anything from that experiment.

One thing I did notice, however, due to the paltry amount of potatoes, was that the bin got really soggy. The drainage holes I made just weren't doing their job and the potatoes that did grow were squishy and waterlogged.

Using grow bags
Instead of growing the potatoes in the containers again this year (one completely had degraded due to years of weather and sunlight), I decided to try growing potatoes in grow bags. The bags I ended up getting are felt-like and have a porous fabric that allows excess water to drain and the roots to breathe. Quite a difference from their last environment.

Hilling with straw and soil
One additional thing I'm doing differently this year is hilling the potatoes with layers of straw and soil. In previous years I hilled with just soil and it was always a pain digging through all that dirt to get to the goods. Over the years I had read that you can use straw. I didn't fully believe that just straw would work so I decided to use a combination layering technique of straw and soil.

So far, the potatoes are growing like crazy, but they grew like crazy in the old bins as well. I won't know if there's going to be any improvement until I harvest them, but I'm keeping my hopes up.

Do you grow potatoes? If so, do you grow them in bins?

Backyard Bounty book giveaway

I got a review copy of the book, Backyard Bounty: The Complete Guide to Year-Round Organic Gardening in the Pacific Northwest, from my publisher and I have to say, I've been loving it. Even though I've read a ton of books on gardening and gardening in the Pacific Northwest, in particular, I'm still learning a great deal.

The author, Linda Gilkeson, a master gardener, lives in the BC area and the content is certainly catered towards those living in the Pacific Northwest. But I have to say that the vast majority of the book would apply not only to those who live in similar climates but to all gardeners as well.

The book includes:

* Planning your garden and preparing the soil
* Organic fertilizers and simplified composting
* Growing healthy seedlings, transplanting, easy weeding and mulching
* Growing fruit and simple pruning methods
* Greenhouses, tunnels, and containers
* Organic pest management and more

Book giveaway
If you are interested in entering the random drawing for a copy of this book, leave your name in the comments of this post and tell me if you are a new, seasoned or expert gardener!

Bonus entry
If you are a "fan" of my Facebook page, you can get a second entry, just add an extra comment saying you LIKE me, you really LIKE me!

The rules
You have until midnight PST Saturday, May 28th to enter. Good luck and happy gardening!

Backyard mini-orchard

This weekend, in addition to harvesting a ton of greens and herbs, I planted some fruit trees and hardened off some plants. I'm doing a long slow hardening off of my tomato plants and need to acquire some more for the bed I built. I also started hardening off the pumpkin plants I started inside a few weeks ago. I think I went a little crazy with the pumpkins because I have something like 24 pumpkins plants going.

As for planting, I planted 6 fruit trees. This is from the batch that I ordered a month or so ago. Two of them didn't come because the nursery deemed they "didn't look good" enough. But, in the end I planted:

1 cherry
1 plum
1 peach
1 nectarine
2 pears

That brings all my fruit trees/bushes/plants to the following:

2 dwarf cherries
2 columnar apples
2 dwarf pears
1 dwarf nectarine
1 dwarf peach
1 dwarf plum
1 Peter's Honey Fig

Plus:
2 blueberries
4 blackberries
30 strawberries
3 grape vines

I also planted some flowers in the front yard. My sunflowers are popping up through the ground and, hopefully, won't get trampled much more by the kids.

Do you have any fruit trees in your yard? What's your favorite?

Salad days and then some

We are well into eating salad every day and I thought I'd share some pictures from around our urban farm that I took this week.

Our first hoop house is going gangbusters. It's growing spinach, two types of lettuce, carrots, broccoli and sugar snap peas:


Our garlic is getting huge. I wish this picture really showed not only how tall they are but how much girth they've got going on:


Our annual herbs are growing nicely. In this shot there's Italian flat leaf parsley, cilantro, dill and oregano (in the background):


Our cherry tree is pretty much done with its blossoms and we have a nice crop of tiny fruit coming along:


The columnar apples are still blossoming:


My potato experiment is going wild. I've already hilled it a couple times. These potatoes (I have two going) are being raised in grow bags and hilled with a mix of soil and straw:


Finally, our strawberry bed is in bloom:



How are things growing in your yard?