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Okay, so this isn't my vegetable garden. Actually, I haven't even started my outdoor vegetables... But I have been revelling in the flowers greeting me this spring. It's been fun to figure out what I have growing in my yard. This is just one small garden area shown. We built the trellis a couple weeks ago and planted sweet peas (the flowers, not the veggie) beneath.
As far as vegetables go, these peas are doing the best.

I must confess that I killed most everything else. Everything still looks like seedlings, even after months. I have a few scraggly tomato plants, some poor cayenne peppers, two bell peppers that miraculously survived when I fried the rest... And so today at the local market I said "screw it" and bought a few small plants - shepard peppers and cayenne and two types of tomato plants. Just two of each. Next year, I may just toss the idea of starting these from seeds and buy the plants! At $1.25 for two plants - I only need a few - I can't go wrong!!
I sure hope all the seeds I plant directly outdoors will fare better... ...

I'll go admire my pretty perennials now. The ones I had nothing to with planting! That's why they grow so well![/img]

Your smoke bush looks nice! As for the veggies, they need to be pricked out and potted on. It is a problem if you don't have a greenhouse as plants never get enough light on window sills and keep growing towards the light and get tall and lanky. Sometimes it is easier to buy small veg plants rather than try to raise them yourself, and you still get the pleasure from planting them out and watching them grow!

Your garden looks like a great place to relax with a glass of wine

Good luck with the veggies too.

Looks lovely Mandy!

At long last I have begun the vegetable gardens and gotten the plants out of my house!!
So here it is, the garden on a slope. It took a lot of work to convince OH to do any work, and in the end he backpedalled on building raised beds (cost reasons - grrr). I had hoped I could find some recycled plastic boards - something cheap and relatively unfinished (not like the pricey boards made for decking and fences - though I'd love those for a deck one day). This was the compromise with pallet wood. It seems sufficient. And if it collapses, I guess he'll have fun fixing it! We still need more pallets to build a middle wall here and two for the other garden. But I've begun, so I'm happy!






They're not done yet. I was mostly concerned with getting the tomatoes and peppers in the ground after I bought them a couple days ago. I'd started some from seed, but none turned out very well. Next year I'll skip seeds! It was threatening to start raining on me - and I'd hoped it would. We don't have a hose or watering can yet... guess I better go shopping tomorrow for a can.
Things aren't as perfect as I imagined either. The soil is okay - at least its neutral in all the right ways (after testing) and I added compost - but it has a lot of pine needles in it from the tree that fell down. I figured the tomato plants would like that. Time will tell...

Well it's coming on. The hard work - clearing and digging - is done. You just wait until you can actually eat something you've grown - I still get a kick from it every time! I'm not a brilliant gardener, but I've always grown runner beans. Even if I've no time for anything else, there are runner beans come high summer. The ones in the shops are always so overgrown and stringy (since they weigh more) and you just cannot beat the flavour of something picked from your garden just minutes before you cook it and put it on the plate! I don't like peas as a rule - but I LOVE the ones I grow!

This year I have trebled my growing area, and plan to extend it again over the winter. The bit that used to be nearly head height deep in nettles and brambles is trying to fight back with crops of weeds, but I am trying to keep on top of it. My bugbear at the moment is water. Our shared supply with the farm next door has gone to the wall as it sprung a leak, so he turned it off. So every evening I am having to carry about 40 buckets of water from the bottom of the house to the top of the yard. With all this energy expenditure I should look like a stick insect but there is still barely a flickering muscle underneath my post-menopausal flab. . .

Keep up the good work and enjoy the watering!!!

Well done Mandy! Look forward to some more photos (great photos by the way!) later on.