How does our garden grow?

I thought it might be nice to share our little garden. Above are our sungold cherry tomatoes. They are super sweet and delicious! We've had a few to turn yellow and we munched them right away! Soon, they will be ready!

Here's the pic of the prized first one!



Dynamo waters religiously and fertilizes the plants! We have them in little square foot garden boxes!



We have three varieties of tomatoes, eggplant, two varieties of peppers, lettuce, and chives. We have one HUGE cherry tomato plant in a container by the back steps! There's one mater that's almost ready! The plant is taller than me and full of maters!



And, here's a pic of the pepper plant...



And, now for the flowers...

We have six raised beds that started out like this...



And, now they look like this...



The zinnias are in full bloom!



Look at all the happiness!



And, here are the three rows of sunflowers we planted last week!



They are just now peeking through the dirt! The ones we planted next to the garage are a few inches tall now! It isn't easy to see them in this pic, but they are there!



The yard is so beautiful this time of year! Everything is happy an blooming! Dynamo has worked hard watering every morning before work and every night after!



It takes lots of work to keep everything happy and healthy! We make a good team! Now, if Charlie could only stop running through the sunflower rows and tearing them up we would be fine! He loves fresh dirt!

How does our garden grow?

Remember the post about the peanut hulls in the raised bed garden? Well, so far so good. Of course a few sprouts of grass appear here and there, but overall they are a very good mulch. We're going to put a layer of newspaper down this fall and on top of that another load of peanut hulls. That should really keep everything out! I'm really pleased at the look and the job the hulls are doing. Also, the beds are blooming with pretties!! Thanks to Dynamo's watering skills. We have a lot to water and it takes a team effort to keep everything going. We just need to get some rain soon!!!!

Raised Bed Gardening

For those of you who don't know, my mom and I grow and sell cut flowers...of course with the help of dad and Dynamo. It takes all of us to make it happen, believe me! Mom grows the majority of the flowers at her place. My job is to grow additional celosia and zinnias to add to her vast array of other beauties! We don't have fantastic soil where we're at, so Dynamo built these beautiful raised beds for me in our side yard last year. It's still a work in progress for us, but it's coming along.

Grass in between the beds is quite a pain, so I decided to try something new this year...peanut hulls! It's hard to tell by the above picture, but the brown material that looks like mulch is actually the by-product of the peanut shelling process...the shells! Many people use it in many different ways (i.e. horse bedding, composting, soil amendment, etc.). I decided that since it was free (as long as we picked it up) it was worth the try to see how good it was at keeping down the grass. If it works at my house the plan is to use it at mom's too! I'll keep you updated.

The weather this year has been really strange. The flowers are growing very slowly as you can see in the picture above, but the flowers around my house are doing great! I included a couple of pictures from my yard below. I love flowers and working in the yard! It's therapy for me!