This year's garden...

After our grocery shopping expedition this morning (which went quite well) B reminded me that I had wanted to get photos of this year's morning glories, which are purple instead of the usual blue. So I wandered around the garden with the camera for a bit, recording the harvest-time progress. The morning glories are growing on the fence that surrounds the raised garden (formerly the sandbox) where the carrots & daikon radish are growing. We have learned to keep our hands out of there (except to weed) until at least September for best results, so we are still waiting to see how everyone did :)

The tomatoes are growing in self-watering planters on the back deck, which is pretty much all the deck is qualified for, in my opinion. It was built with a step that runs diagonally the whole width of the deck, so you can't put a table on it & 2 chairs barely fit, so it's not place for leisurely breakfasts or hanging out. Each one of us has taken a fall on this deck as well, thanks to the weirdness of the design, & I even managed to fall off the diagonal step while carry our rabbit in his cage a few years ago, but at least bun survived the fall unscathed... We are looking forward to tearing the deck off someday, but until then it is good for planters & for staging tie-dyeing & indigo vats :)

The edamame soy beans are doing very well this year & we've already had a meal with them. The taste so much fresher than the frozen ones & are just as easy to grow as regular beans.

This is the poor, lonely shiso plant that grew from the row of seeds I planted. It's a japanese herb, used for pickling (makes them a lovely magenta colour) & I hope to figure out how to do some japanese pickling this fall (there's the daikon radish to deal with, for one thing...).

Perhaps our biggest crop this year will be the fennel seeds that grew from plants reseeded over the past few years from B's original herb garden. Fennel is great for gassy tummies, so it's no wonder we have some in the garden. I started B on fennel tea for colic when he was a baby...

The cool thing about the garden is that B has been right in there with us since we turned the garden over to him 2 summers ago for his herbs (which led to us starting our own tea company, "Mint Invasion" :). He likes digging in the dirt & will weed right alongside us if wearing gardening gloves (we gave him mine, since I never seem to use them). He learned a great deal about herbs that summer, but was happy to go back to veggies this year (last summer we kind-of treaded water, garden-wise, although I did purchase the tomato planters last summer & discovered that they work really well on the back porch). We started the tomatoes & peppers from seed last February- then discovered that the timing was a bit early :) We planted all the seeds together this past June, B, C, & I. When you consider that our back yard is the size & shape of a postage stamp (& the garden takes up most of it), our city garden is doing pretty well. The calendula patch is yielding flowers for drying, from which I'll make infused oil for salve. The sunflowers are about to bloom. The zucchini seems to be the only dud this year, with 4 plants only putting out male flowers so far (I do wonder about that...). B keeps a watchful eye on everything & reminds me to check for more edamame. We are all looking forward to pulling the first carrots & daikon :)