garden planting

In the last week of May Mom, Riley Mae, and I planted our gardens — one of my favorite times of the year.

Sure, my family and I always tend to lose some interest in the gardens during the hottest dog days of summer, and then we kinda just let them go to do their thing (we’re always surprised to go out to harvest the winter squashes and discover just how many were hidden in the leaves!).

But springtime? We love getting everything all cleaned up, going out every morning to water, and seeing the baby plants grow!

irises (left), and bleeding hearts (right) blooming

baby zinnias popped up in just a few days!

And nothing calms me down quite like doing some morning weeding. Gardening gloves who? I need to touch the earth and make contact with all those good microorganisms 🤘🏼

This year we decided to do what we talk about doing every year, and just planted flowers in the raised-beds garden in the backyard. So we have six large beds of zinnias, and 12 smaller side beds of orange and yellow calendulas. We’re especially excited about this garden, because as some of you know, zinnias are my thing™.

last year’s glorious zinnias

I don’t remember when I discovered that zinnias existed, but ever since then, they have been a yearly staple. They’re gorgeous, easy to grow, bloom up until the first frost, and they attract all the goldfinches who love to eat their seeds.

Of course the latter is a pro and a con, as sometimes the finches get a little overexcited and tear apart some perfectly good flowers before they even turn to seed. But this year we should have more than enough to share!

In the second (larger) garden we planted our favorite vegetables: green beans (we went with bush beans instead of pole beans this time around), butternut squash, and crookneck summer squash.

We also threw in a couple watermelons (we never have much luck with them, but this could be our year!), some marigolds (I collected the seeds from last year’s plants), and some honeynut squashes (we collected the seeds from store-bought squashes).

FYI if you’ve ever had a butternut squash, a honeynut squash is quite similar, except it’s smaller, significantly sweeter, and has more of a creamy texture. It’s absolutely delicious, and the germination rate for the seeds we collected has been amazing, so fingers crossed that they bear much fruit! They’re a winter squashes as well, and so they’ll be able to be stored well into the cold months.

(left) fresh rain on the day lilies, (right) baby bush beans

This year was a little iffy when it came to the perfect planting weather, since we were having nights drop into the 30s up until the week of planting. But thankfully we seem to have at least moved on from the freezing temps…even if it has still been an extremely cool and gloomy spring.

Right now the garden is in the phase where most of the first round of seeds have fully germinated and appeared, and I’m going along and popping in a few last seeds in the empty spots. I’m a highly enthused seed planter, and always end up putting at least two seeds in each planting mound. I also usually leave whatever babies come up…even if it’s three or four of them.

our little hummingbird friends love all of the coral bells in bloom

I know, I know, you’re supposed to thin the babies out so that they grow into strong, healthy, abundant plants…but most of the time I don’t, and we still end up with more vegetables than we can even keep up with! I just think, the more the merrier…and the more veggies you can get before the borer moths kill all the plants!

My goal is to always have the garden so full of plants that you can hardly walk through it 🌱

(left) the back garden all planted, (right) the wild roses in bloom

There really is just something about walking out to the garden in the morning though.

Currently the multiflora rose bush growing over the rock is blooming, and the sweet perfume hits you as soon as you near the garden. A pair of cardinals have a nest in the ever-growing bush, as they do every year, but this time it looks like it might actually be a successful brood, as the brave mama is much more well-hidden on her nest than she was any of the previous years.

A lot of my family’s outdoor projects seem to be long-term-gratification projects, and this back garden was no different.

We put this garden together in 2020 and planted perennials all along the inner perimeter of it. At the time they were small and sparse, but our visions was to eventually have a big, beautiful hedge of greenery that was easy to maintain.

the garden in 2021 with it’s small perimeter plants

Now, a few years later, we’re starting to see our vision come to life. This year everything is blooming bigger than ever. Big bushes of pink, and white bleeding hearts; irises that spread by the year; daylilies which are just beginning to send up their flower shoots; beautiful purple lupins; multiple kinds of coral bells; a whole bunch of full, fragrant lemon balms; and even one bush of thyme, which we did not expect to keep growing past the first year!

Every year we fill in the empty spots and holes still around the perimeter, so that we’ll eventually reach full capacity. Last year’s addition were some groups of black-eyed Susans which I transplanted from the edge of our property (I’m also hoping that they’ll spread into our meadow, which I talked about in this recent post!), and this year’s addition were a couple more iris plants.

All the veggies and flowers are doing so well so far, despite the strange weather, and I can’t wait to get some updated photos in a couple months when everything is at its peak of growth! 💚