Get Growing: Garden Update

It's only the beginning of April and already I have enjoyed so much green foliage & things GROWING in the garden. For some reason my mini-head lettuce did not come up at all in the first planting, neither did the spinach. I have since replanted them both and now waiting to see what happens.

Here are my carrots popping up!

 This is my romaine lettuce.

 One of my strawberry patches.

 Here are both my strawberry patches

The Blueberry bushes have budded up nicely.

 I have three fall transplants of rhubarb from last fall, then I planted 9 bare root plant a week ago

 Here are the thorn-less red raspberries (planted last Spring)
The boxes in the background are part of the bee hive boxes I got. I don't think they are good enough to use as hive boxes but they will great "planters" for my herbs.

 The chives are doing just dandy as well.

 This is a cutting flower garden area. These are mostly peonies (one of my Spring favorites). There are also pink Coneflower, Shasta daisies, Lilies, & Hosta. Don't pay attention to all that lovely black landscape fabric popping up all over. I haven't decided what material I want to mulch with as of now. It's weed free so that's a start, right?

 The name of this perennial dwarf grass has slipped my mind right now, but I like it.

 I was just gifted these lilies a couple weekends ago. I'm excited to see what kind they are.

 The thorn-less blackberries are looking really fabulous with all their beautiful green foliage. This year I decided to try something new. A super thick layer of newspaper and about 5-6 inches of straw on top of that. I got the newspapers free from a friend, & we already had the straw. This new system has been in place for at least the past 4-5 weeks now and still completely weed free! I'm glad that this will cut down on my weeding time, plus it will compost down into nutrients that are good for the garden.

 While a pile of manure is far from something most people want to see....I'm super excited about the start of the new compost pile! It's to rich in nitrogen to use this Spring so it will sit and bake all summer and we will put it on the gardens in the Fall.