peas | Mom in the Garden

Brussels Sprouts & Pumpkins.

The garden is really looking full! The Brussels sprouts plants are getting huge! The stalks are just starting to produce itty bitty teeny weeny little sprouts!

Brussels Sprouts (teeny weeny ones!)

Yeah, well, maybe you can’t see them on a compressed picture. You might just have to take my word that they are actually there! Every day there seems to be just a bit more growth.

Brussels Sprouts’ large purplish colored leaves.

Brussels Sprouts are a new adventure for us. We started our garden three seasons ago, and every year we have expanded and tried something new. I love that! But I really think we need to add another bed for next year. My pumpkin plants are squished! I think I want a nice big bed just for pumpkins. 🙂

The veggie beds.

Here is a look at the other side of the garden. The potatoes are doing well. We’re still eating “last year’s” potatoes! The peas are almost ready for picking.

Peas.

Garlic, carrots, swede (turnip), parsnips, beets, rainbow chard, and more pumpkins.

Here’s what I’ve learned this season: Swede need their own bed since their leaves will cover up everything around them! Carrots need to go in the higher beds to avoid carrot fly. We could never plant too much beet root (not enough of them germinated this year). Planting onions from seed is easy. That sticking extra pumpkin plants into one half of a tiny little veggie beds was a crazy idea. I think a big bed right next to those veggie beds is just the thing! Now to convince my husband 😉

A very busy picture! My focus was on the Sweet Pea at the front of the garden.

We planted some sweet pea at the top of our fruit garden (well, it is mostly fruit). I wanted something fun to brighten it up. I think they’ve done a good job. We were quite late in planting them, so they aren’t in all of their glory just yet.

Sweet pea change color as they age.

Sweet pea.

Different shades of sweet pea.

It rather felt a bit like cheating when I bought a globe artichoke plant this year. Isn’t that silly? I have a few packets of seeds, but just never got around to planting them. But in the end, I’m delighted that I did buy the plant because look what I have now:

Globe Artichoke plant.

This is one rather tall plant! I have counted 5 baby artichokes on it!

A few of the artichokes.

Artichoke up close.

When do I confess that I have never had a fresh artichoke??? I love canned ones though! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! (Guess who will be searching the internet looking up how to cook a fresh artichoke?)

The front garden with a globe artichoke plant.

I have the globe artichoke in one of my flower beds. I’ve seen them in gardens before and I found them to be a showy plant, and here is where I wanted mine to perform.

Flower garden with a globe artichoke plant and a view.

What simple pleasures! How lovely to be able to plant food and flowers and enjoy their beauty and their taste! Have you planted something new this year?

Dana

Some of my Shasta Daisy 🙂

Weeding, it’s like housework, it just has to be done! I confess to much preferring being outdoors and weeding to being inside doing housework, though. Today I had the privilege of listening to my kids play on the trampoline with their friends while I was pulling weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. Funny how the kids never want to pull weeds with me. We could make a game of it; something like “let’s see who can pull the most weeds!”. I’ll have to give that one a try tomorrow…

I’ve mentioned that our garden is in a constant state of change as we grow it, learn, and figure out how we want it to look eventually. The area of our “fruit orchard”, I just have to put that in quotes since the area is so small we call it that affectionately, is not the shape we want it just yet. We discovered this year that we’ve planted too close to the fence, so we’ll have to bring that area back a tiny bit. That lovely black carpeting (read: ugly) is where we’ll have stone paths eventually. We planted more asparagus this year, so that space was expanded. We’re planning on two rows of peas for next year, too, since they are growing so nicely. When we get the shape and size finally right, we’re planning on enclosing the area. I really want a small white picket fence. Can you just see the pretty pink climbing roses along the fence with white hydrangea? I’m sure I’ve pinned something like that from pinterest!

Back to reality, and our current garden! The first of my Dutch Iris is blooming, and I think it is so pretty. The first of my roses has also finally bloomed. The sunlight this evening captured it so brilliantly. The mess in the middle of my front yard is my next garden project. I have to kill the grass (with newspapers & cardboard). I’ve also put the sod which was dug up from other places in the yard there, to incorporate it into the new garden. There’s no point in wasting perfectly good sod! I’m glad my husband is a patient man, and doesn’t mind the mess involved with killing the grass the slow way. Good things come to those who wait 🙂

I hope you don’t have too long to wait for blooms in your garden!
Dana