A lot has been going on in my little fifth-acre lot this spring and I know I have at least one friend who’s been asking for garden pictures. So here they are!
First, I wanted to put up an old picture I took at the beginning of the season. I feel like I always take pictures of the garden when it’s looking good so no one sees the mess that it starts out as. I didn’t take a picture at the very, very beginning. But this picture shows that my front porch starts out as a giant mess of these wall-of-waters. 
So on to the real progress. I have most of my tomatoes out on the front porch already. I’m kind of angry with my local nursery because they promised to carry a particular tomato variety (Sprite, which I mentioned last year). But they didn’t order those plants. And then they kept telling me that they had definitely ordered them, so I didn’t start any seeds for that variety. Long story short, I waited really late to start my Sprite seeds so those haven’t gone out yet. But the other varieties are out and ready to start producing.
This year I thought I was going to streamline my selections and just grow multiples of my favorites, but that didn’t work out . . . The front porch is so full that I’ve had to expand more into the back yard than ever.
Here, you see mostly greens, herbs, and legumes. The plants on the ground are different potato varieties growing in grow bags.
Here’s another view of the same section of the garden. You can see my cattle panel trellis on the right of the image. I’m really happy with how those turned out, so maybe I’ll do another post on how to put them up. This was waaaaay more cost effective than buying traditional trellis material. Plus, from a distance it’s not as visible. I definitely didn’t want something that really stood out from the street.
Another view of the backyard/patio. In the foreground you can see mustard, kohlrabi, cabbage, and snow peas.
This still isn’t enough space for all the seeds I started, so I’m getting ready to use the new bed I prepared over the winter. To make this bed, I put down wet cardboard to smother the grass and then covered that with some soil and mulch.
It definitely looks like this is a super-shady area but I think this was the end of the day. This area gets a decent amount of sun and I plan to fill it with corn. Clearly I won’t have the space to plant it in a large block so I’ll be hand pollinating this summer.
So that’s the garden so far. I’m sure I’ll be sharing when I start harvesting. Well, I’ve been harvesting lettuce. And a few onions which bolted early. But those are boring!