When I first started my garden I planted bush beans, tomatoes, sweet peppers, and watermelon.  So far the only things that are growing are the bush beans and watermelons.  After waiting a couple of weeks to see if the rest of the plants would come up (which they did not) I decided to rework the soil and plant a fall/winter garden.  Here are my choices.

I ordered these seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  I decided to go with heirloom seeds because I feel as though I’m preserving a piece of history.  And there’s something about planting the same seed that was planted sometimes hundreds of years ago, that makes me happy.  I think everything will grow, but I’m not sure about the parsnips.  I know they take a while to mature but I’m going to try them anyways.  If we have a winter like we did last year, I don’t think I’ll have a problem.

It’s about halfway through summer and I think my garden is doing pretty well.  Sure my tomatoes and peppers didn’t grow but my beans and watermelon sure did.  And despite the fact that some plants didn’t grow, I’ve still enjoyed being outside every day and looking after the ones that did.  I usually go down to the garden at least once a day, most of the time twice.  I water in the morning and then in the evening, my husband and I usually venture outside after supper.  He plays with the pups and I pull weeds.  This is much more enjoyable now that it isn’t 100+ degrees everyday and I think I’ll enjoy it even more when I have some produce to collect!

Here is what my garden looks like with the new additions.

I planted 1 row of parsnips.

In this picture there is spinach on the left and lettuce in the top right.  The lettuce has to share its spot with chives that I planted about a week ago.

Here we have broccoli on the left and carrots on the right.  Hopefully all my new plantings will grow!

The beans.  About how long does it take to get flowers on bush beans?  I keep waiting and waiting but no flowers yet.

This is the bigger of the 2 watermelons.  

Theres the little guy.  I’m not sure what I do to the big plant that I don’t do to this one, but I ended up with 2 different sized watermelon plants even though they were planted at the same time.  I guess it will just take some time to even them out.

Have you started your fall/winter garden?  If you have, what did you plant?

RT