First Full Spring Garden Update – It’s started!

 Are you guys ready for the first big garden update of the year? I sure am! 

So let’s dive in and see how the garden is looking in the beginning months of growing season.  All these pictures were taken on Sunday where we did a full day of hard garden work (while lathering on SPF 1 million).   This post is picture heavy as I’m going to take you on a full tour and introduce you to every single vegetable we’re growing.  Besides my usual harvest posts I’m going to continue to do full garden updates about every 2 weeks so make sure you keep checking back to watch  their progress!

We were just planting radish seeds and now they’re ready to be eaten.  Expect a radish harvest post very soon!

Here are the 5 gallon buckets that house the strawberry plants.  The winter was pretty harsh on the strawberries so it’s nice to see them finally looking strawberry lovely again.  I’m interested in trying to grow more in the strawberry family so we just got ourselves a raspberry plant to test out.  Because it takes a while… check back next year for a update, hahaha.

This 8 feet long container used to house carrots, kale and onions but it’s totally turned into the kale crazy  container.  As you can see there are 6 growing kale plants already but there are 12 more babies growing there.  How did this happen?  Well there were baby kales that just popped up and Mama Kale can’t say goodbye.. so more kale for us!

Beautiful kale babes. I say beautiful alot in Garden Update posts. I can’t control myself.

This is just a ton of onions.  They all look pretty great.  

Now on to the Sugar Snap Peas – yeah!  I mentioned in a past post that we went Sugar Snap Pea wild this year and are growing 3 boxes.  So far the box all the way in the back is winning the race on who will grow to the top first. This is Sugar Snap Pea Papa helping his peas climb to the top.

These are the other 2 boxes that are beginning to take off and have begun climbing up the tall fence.  Grow peas grow!

I love how the peas naturally attach themselves and grow.  It makes my heart pitter patter with garden happiness. 

In one of the Sugar Snap Peas we have a bunch of lettuce heads growing up front. The lettuce grew absolutely amazing this Spring and I will be doing a full post on their beauty and amazingness very soon as it’s currently Lettucepalozza 2014 at our house. 

Lettuce you rule.  Really.

I mean seriously look at you bushy green beauties! *Does the lettuce dance*.

You read about a bok choy harvest last week but here’s 6 more plants.   Cutting the outside leaves was a great idea as the plants are growing back nicely again.

Now let’s look at some of my favorites (shhhhh)…. broccoli and cauliflower!

The broccoli is starting to grow.  Hoping we’ll be able to harvest in 2-3 weeks.

All the broccoli plants have heads on them! The cauliflower isn’t visible yet but I looked around and saw their baby heads that I just stared at adoringly.

About this time in the garden a lady bug flew at me and landed on my face making me scream as I thought it was a spider (the horror!).  Then after I learned it was a ladybug I felt horrible.  We then placed her in the broccoli and I apologized to her a million times.

OH YEAH! Tomato and pepper time!  We have tomatoes and peppers in 2 different sets.  This is set 1.  The 3 containers in the back are beef and roma tomatoes.  The 2 containers up front are pepper plants, both jalapeno and bell pepper plants. 

This is a beautiful Roma tomato plant.   You are so lovely. You will turn into delicious salsa. 

This is section 2.  The plants in the top left are cherry tomato plants.  The plants in the top right are more pepper plants.  The plants in the bottom right are tomatillos!

3 bushy cherry tomato plants! Can’t wait to get these tomatoes growing so I can just throw them in my mouth nonstop.

I can’t believe we grew this many peppers this year.  I really can’t.

We usually have 1 container of 3 pepper plants and this year we have 3 containers of 12 plants.  It’s because we couldn’t kill the seedlings.  Our hearts are too big.

This is the first year growing tomatillo plants.  Right now we have 3 growing and there will be 3 more added from downstairs when they’re ready for the heat.

This section here are seedlings that were just transplanted.  We put up this fabric to harden them off as the sun is very harsh to new plants.  What’s underneath?

We have 2 pumpkin plants, also favorites (shhhh).

Then a bunch of cucumber and watermelon plants.   Soon cantaloupes will be added!

And just to show some love, some people ask me if we grow flowers in the garden.  The answer is not really as we stick to vegetables but I wanted to show you the flowers we do grow.  

We recently added a Forsythia bush to our garden.  At first we thought this could possibly be too big for the garden but then we thought… nah! Let’s do it!

This lovely fellow was planted with love.  Grow strong!

This is our azalea that is a few years old.  She’s always so pretty.

And then this is my favorite girl (shhhh), rhododendron.  I picked her out one year specifically because she had a giant arm hanging off one side.  Matthew scoured at me because I always pick the most quirky looking plants (also Christmas trees) but he loves her just as much as me now.

Also who knew Brussels Sprouts plants produced such beautiful flowers!  I would almost grow them just for the flowers…

Aren’t they just beauties?  Half vegetables, half flowers, all gorgeous.

 Hope you guys enjoyed the first full garden update of the year!  Let me know in the comments what your garden looks like and what you’re growing!

Happy gardening everyone!