Summer Vegetable Garden

After our first attempt at gardening this past spring, Brannon decided to rework the beds and get them a little more organized. We had great success with our lettuce, arugula, purple potato and red onion plantings in the spring, but the lack of division amongst the plants made it harder to identify and harvest what had been planted. After doing a little research on "square-foot gardening" Brannon built several narrow planters and divided them into one foot sections with wire.

Here is what the garden looked like on July 11th:

The entire length of the garden is about 20 feet long from fence to fence. The depth is about five feet from the driveway to the back fence. Brannon put in a walkway between the back and front planters to help with accessing the plants for harvesting. The planters are about 1 foot high and have been filled with a mix of dirt and fresh composted dirt from our two compost bins.

We planted squash, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, okra, corn, green beans, bell peppers, and several other things I cannot remember now... After a two months of sun and watering, the garden looks like this now:

The cantaloupe, cucumbers, squash and watermelon have almost completely taken over the garden. A few stalks of corn have grown along the back fence, but they have not produced any corn yet. I also cannot find any pumpkins amongst the plants. And the bell peppers are also now where to be seen. My guess is that the cantaloupe, squash and cucumber plants have blocked all the light to the other sections of the garden and hence those seeds did not sprout. And as you can see, the walkway is completely covered as well.

One of the cantaloupes growing in the garden.

This is one of the little watermelons. We aren't quite sure when we should pick these...

If anyone has a good recipe for okra, please send them to me! I have yet to find an okra recipe I like (Brannon likes okra, hence the okra plants).

The kids have loved watching the garden come to life and it has provided a great learning opportunity for them. They have learned about what plants need in order to grow and about pollination by bees. It is also amazing what they will try at dinner when you tell them "this came from our garden!"