The Clem Clan: Spring is in Bloom

Here are pictures of the garden taken today to show how much everything has grown. Justin is going to have to be my gardener while I am recovering from my c-section later this week; I have faith in him to watch my plants for bugs and disease so we have a bountiful harvest later. I can't wait to eat everything we are growing.

One end of the big planter box with butter lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots.

Carrots

A bunch of baby carrots are just starting to sprout as well but you can't see them in the picture.

Butter Lettuce

2 green butter lettuce plants and 1 red butter lettuce plant

Tomatoes

One of the tomato plants, a "Bush Celebrity." I also planted a Roma tomato and I think the other one is a Sweet 100.

Peppers

A jalapeno pepper (top) and Serrano pepper (bottom).

Green beans

I also noticed this evening a green bean plant from the second round of seeds (2 weeks after these) is starting to sprout!

Corn

We decided to build an additional 4'x4' planter box just for corn. We planted 16 "Gold Bantam" corn plants. It's an heirloom sweet corn.

Squash

Zucchini squash (top right) and yellow summer squash (bottom left).

Strawberries

I also ended up buying a strawberry planter and planting 2 different varieties of strawberries. I didn't think to take a picture of the whole pot but it has openings like this all around the sides so the strawberry plants grow out the side of the pot. If you look close you can see the baby strawberry starting to grow.

Herbs

My herbs have also exploded. My sage is in full bloom (the purple flowers), the parsley has exploded, basil is doing well, the thyme is looking good, and my oregano is making a comeback after looking a bit brown and sad this winter.

I also released 2,000 ladybugs in my garden yesterday to help eat the aphids that I have been battling on my pepper and okra plants. I don't have a picture of the okra plants because they haven't been growing much due to the infestation. I've been picking them off myself and using some organic insecticidal soap which helped some, but I prefer completely natural (truly organic) methods to rid the plants of them. Hence, ladybugs. I didn't see any aphids on my plants today and I still have ladybugs hanging around!