It has been a while since I shared a gardening post with you.  One of my favorite hobbies is gardening, hence today I will share some pictures of my flower patches and my veggies garden.

Every year I like to make some changes to my gardens, or even reorganize them all together.

A few years ago I changed my one large plot garden into a more of a square foot gardening pattern, using cinder blocks.  I kept it for only 2 seasons since I found out that cinder blocks are not the best choice of material for building a vegetable garden, due to a very small percentage of fly ash found in the cement.

I know many people are using cinder blocks and probably find no issues with them, and the distributors of this material were reassuring me about the safety of their product, but I made up my mind to once more change my garden layout and use cedar wood to construct the raised garden beds as shown above.  I did reuse the cinder blocks to construct walk paths around the garden for easier access from all sides.  I placed them slated at about a 20-degree angle downward from the sides of the garden beds so the water will run away from the garden into the backyard.  The space between the two rectangular garden beds serves as a nice walk path and an area to collect yard waste and mix it with the existing soil to enrich it then use it in the garden beds.  I have cardboard and a piece of outdoor rug covering the path during the growing season.

This is my garden fully planted for this year.  I grow strawberries, zucchini, potatoes, red beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, spinach, scallions, parsley, garlic, dill, thyme, lovage, sorrel, asparagus, celery, and cilantro.

If you are searching for other gardening ideas,  please click on this link to enjoy this informative blog.

This is a Lovage plant, in case you were wondering what it looks like.  It is a perennial herb, which resembles celery leaves, but in taste, it is a combination of Celery and Italian Flat Leaf Parsley.  It really adds a lot of very special flavor and aroma to many dishes.  It is a very popular herb in Eastern Europe, hence the seeds came from my sister in Krakow.

This year I am testing a vertical style of growing a zucchini plant to see if this will prevent the usual zucchini bug infestation, hence extend the life and production of this plant.  In the past I let it grow flat on the ground so the large leaves would harbor many bugs underneath, which eventually destroys the plant.

This is my first year planting Celery.  The plant on the left is actually growing from a celery kitchen scrap.  I cut off about 2 inches of the end of store-bought celery and planted it in my garden.  As you can see it sprouted nicely and will grow to maturity then produce flowers and seeds for next year’s seeding.  The picture on the right shows this year’s celery grown from last year’s free seeds. It can’t get any easier or cheaper, right?

This tomato self-seed itself from either last year’s fruit falling to the ground and decomposing then got transferred with dirt to my flower bed, or the birds dropped a seed and it sprouted this year in my flower bed.  The plant on the right is a mystery to me as it also self-seeded from some kitchen scraps I buried there last Fall..  It is growing inside my berry bed, hence behind the bird’s netting, and it’s already blooming at such young age.  I can’t wait to find out whether it will produce cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, or cantaloupe???  Time will tell.

This is my berry garden with raspberries and blackberries, having a PVC pipes trellis to support a bird’s netting to protect the fruits from being attacked by the birds.

Besides my small vegetable garden, I have several flower patches to tend to as well.

This is the East side of my backyard.  I also used up the leftover cinder blocks to build this fire pit which is very handy to burn off dried-up vegetation during the spring cleaning of my garden and even during the growing season. The cold ashes mixed into the garden soil add lots of nutrients to it.

This is my longest flower patch which wraps itself all along the East side of the back of the screened porch, the patio, and all the way to the exit gate.

These are the Southside flower patches along the side of the house and the side fence.

The front entry of our home has this inviting flower patch at the Westside.  These are some of the Spring, Summer, and Fall pictures.

The Northside corner consists of different varieties of Hosta, Sedum, Echinacea, and  Mayweed, as well as three bushes of Rose of Sharon, which is a type of a Hardy Hibiscus blooming in July.

The Luna White Hibiscus grows in a different section of the Northside garden.  It is a perennial plant, so it dies down in Fall and regrows from its roots in the Spring.  I love it for its gorgeous dinner-plate size blooms.

Last but not least, the Northside flower patch is located in the far front corner of our front yard.  Now you know what I do in my spare time…:-)

I hope you enjoyed these pictures and please feel free to share some of yours.  Thank you.