Garden Tour – an early summer look!

Garden tour, a little walk about in early July! I won’t say things got “away” from me here on the blog due to the wedding but I definitely feel like I’m playing catch up on so many things I want to share with you guys! June (the month of our wedding) definitely went by in a blur for us. What also went against us was the fact that we had such a horrible, cold, miserable, very late, rainy, freezing, absolute nightmare, spring! I planted our vegetable garden three weeks later than last year and was concerned it was still too early. Because of this, when it did suddenly warm up, our farm just kind of exploded in just a few days.

And those few days just happened to be when we were gone on our honeymoon!

I didn’t even get pictures of our lilacs let alone enjoy them lol.

I think many would wonder why I’m posting a garden tour now with photos this early in the year because so much of our gardens aren’t yet even blooming. But this is my favorite time of the year!

It had finally warmed up. The vegetable garden was just starting to feed us daily and so many of our perennial flowers were just on the cusp of blooming.

(Don’t worry, especially when our lilies bloom, I will absolutely be posting more pictures!)

Forgive the weeds in this garden tour as everything did get away from me a bit! However, I am thrilled to see how little weeding I have now that our flower beds are finally maturing.

Every year things fill in a bit more, everything spreads a little more and our beds just improve that much more.

And, every year, its my little slice of Heaven.

After being moved from the south side of the house to where I was currently living to my moving them again to here on the West side of our fence, I am thrilled our peonies are still going strong. They like full sun so they’ll never be as “happy” here as somewhere south facing.

But knowing my Grandma planted them decades ago means I’m just thrilled to see them every year.

I believe the white ones are my favorites. Maybe because there are so few of them but aren’t they gorgeous? They have this incredible line of red running through their centers.

Not too far away from the peonies are one of the few perenials I brought to the farm. A friend of mine was selling babies of her wild rose bush so I bought a couple.

She warned me it would absolutely take over and my answer was, “Do you promise?”

I don’t like weed wacking or weeding… Who does?

That rose bush is doing so well in fact I’m kind of tempted to encourage it to run down the entire house line…

Moving the garden tour on to our L shaped flower bed by the house.

Click here to get the Grow Dammit sign.

The north side of this garden I haven’t touched in years. I transplanted the Virginia creeper vines, the tiger lilies, the honey suckles, the ferns and the lilies of the valley several years ago. They were almost all perennials my grandma had planted around the farm long before I came around to save them.

The lilies of the valley are really starting to fill up the whole bed thrilling me that I have little to no weeding to do!

The West side of the bed remains a conundrum to me.

I moved my Grandma’s hydrangea bush in here and it somehow lived through that thank goodness though I have no idea if it will ever bloom again… at least its alive!

I had planted a whole pile of milkweed in here years ago and that flourished for awhile but has since petered out. The chives are my one achievement here and I would be glad if they just fill the bed up eventually.

The bees love the purple blooms!

And, of course, we like them too!

MANY years ago I planted asparagus in here to never see it again until… This year for some reason? A whole asparagus / chive bed here would make me extremely happy!

I added a bunch of good dirt to the whole garden this spring and planted ALL of the different kinds of herbs I can find… Not sure if they’re even growing though and why not??

Moving this garden tour on to my Grandma’s flower bed by the garage.

This one I really need to spend some serious quality time in which won’t be happening until next year I’m afraid. The multiple baby oak trees need to go so the day lilies and milk weed can spread.

You can’t really see it in the pictures but we planted an asparagus bed at the back of this garden (in front of the lilac bush) and its actually growing pretty well. Only have about five years (or more) before we get fresh asparagus lol.

There are so many blooms on the day lilies this year I can’t wait to see them!

There’s also daisies, balloon star flowers and brown eyed susans spread around in here. A little work and I know this flower bed could really shine!

Moving our garden tour on…

Our vegetable garden is finally starting to do better entirely because I’ve got a few vegetable gardens here under my belt and I am capable of learning things… entirely because I remembered to WRITE THEM DOWN last year.

To be fair a garden that makes us happy and even feeds us a bit is an achievement in my opinion.

But (obviously) I learn the produce we won’t get tired of, the produce we need to grow less of, the produce that freezes the best etc etc etc. Not to mention what grows where in our little garden the best!

Anyone here who has grown garden squash will probably laugh when I say that I’m happy to have only one squash plant this year lol. The big lettuce bed is a new feature for us and we absolutely love it.

Practically every day for over a month now I have a fresh salad from our garden for lunch. Not to mention at least a couple of nights a week for dinner for us as well!

If you just cut it off (and not pull it) it just keeps on growing endless lettuce for months.

It may just be me but I find it almost miraculous to have a meal we’ve almost entirely home grown ourselves!

My biggest failure last year / this spring was replacing our watering system ASAP. I went from making my own soaker hoses (which did ok for a couple of years) to buying actual soaker hoses (which were almost an entire waste of money) to finally biting the bullet and purchasing this set of sprinklers off of Amazon.

They’re perfect and adorable.

They water the entire garden.

Unfortunately I didn’t get it done soon enough and the majority of our beats and cucumbers didn’t come up due their literally not getting any water. We still have a few plants though and I know next year it will be a whole different scenario!

Also, I don’t hate not having to make a ton of pickles this year and Lodi doesn’t even like beats so it is what it is. I did go looking for cucumber plants to buy but they were all sold out. However, they were NOT sold out of bell pepper plants so we did buy and plant three of those 🙂

I am thrilled to see our radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, beans and peas doing well. Besides that our tomato plants and summer squash are looking amazing and I am so excited for them later this summer.

I really got on myself this year about the garden and it is absolutely the most proud I have ever been.

I was always terrible about thinning out the seedlings – this year I forced myself to get it done RIGHT! And the plan I wrote down on what / where to plant everything this year worked really well.

Every year I learn more and every year it all does get a little bit better!

Thanks for coming on our garden tour with me!