Spring Garden

Our spring garden is in and looking so good. (Remember our first teeny spring garden? We have majorly expanded since then.)

Here are the girls at our favorite nursery a few weeks ago. And here is the list of plants we have going this season. A few of them are heritage meaning they grew themselves back from last year:

Cucumbers: Lemon, Sugar Crunch, Picklebush, and one other my dad gave me 

We have already been eating these guys and love them! Sylvie still likes lemon cucumbers the best because they are "sweet and refreshing." This picture was taken about a month ago when heritage plants from our mice melon were trying to take over the whole box. It has since been thinned out and the cucumbers are as high as their tee-pee.

Mice Melons (heritage - I actually had no interest in growing these again this year after eating SO MANY last year but they came back like crazy so I let a couple stay.)

Bell Peppers: Red and Orange

Tomatoes: Grape (heritage), Sun Gold Cherry, Cherokee Purple, Pineapple, White Beauty, Aunt Ruby's Giant Green (Tomatoes last year)

Lettuces and Mustard Greens (in our new rain gutter garden along the chicken coop)

Herbs: Basil (green and purple), Sage, Parsley, Mint, Chives

Melons: Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Crenshaw  (Melons last year)

Artichoke

Green Onion

Celery

Zucchini

Pumpkins

Anaheim Chili

Ghost Pepper (thanks Daddy!)

And the newest section of our garden is the Sunflower Patch down the side of our house, inspired by how much we loved the one sunflower we grew last year. We originally wanted this to be corn and sunflowers but a gopher came and dug up all of our corn plants and rather than fight a battle with a gopher (they especially love corn and artichoke roots), we decided to go with a Sunflower Patch. We keep a Garden Journal and sunflowers are especially fun to journal because they grow so big so quickly. 

All of our sunflowers need names, of course, so here are their measurements as of May 6th:

Sylvia (the sunflower): 34 in.

Sylvia (the child): 44in.

Elinor (the sunflower): 17 in.

Elinor (the child): 36 in.

Oona: 37in tall; largest leaf 11.5 in. across

Belle: 35 in.

And as of today, 20 days later (you will notice we have a few more):

Sylvia (the sunflower): 50 in.

Sylvia (the child): 45in.

Elinor (the sunflower): 47 in.

Elinor (the child): 38 in.

Oona: 65in tall; largest leaf 15 in. across

Belle: 73 in.

Butterfly: 3 in.

Flowers: 13 in.

Lemoncake: 11.5 in.

Raincloud: 12 in.

Blue: 8 in.