Spring is here and the garden is growing!

Spring is here! We are establishing an asparagus bed and have had one meal so far! It is so good to cut it and bring it into the house, cook it and eat it!

With the warm winter and early spring, we set things out much earlier than normal. Here's a bed of cabbage that is growing phenomenal.

Our upper garden has all of our early plants and they are growing fast and look so dark green. Our new strawberry plants have come to life and are blooming.

We set out broccoli out the first of March and as of last week started eating it! They have dark green wonderful heads.

On Monday, we planted two beds of our tomatoes. I started several varieties of heirloom. These varieties are Watermelon tomatoes, Cindy's West Virginia, Arkansas Traveler and Beefy boy.

I started the tomato seeds the first of February. After they got to a certain point, I put them in the tubes to get nutrients. These are some Cherokee Purple tomatoes that we are going to put in one more bed. I actually saved these seeds from last summer! I wasn't sure how they would do so I planted a lot of them and they all came up! I hope to do more seed saving this year.

Peppers can actually be perennials and so last August we dug this pepper plant up and put it in a pot to winter over in the greenhouse. We had a big batch of banana peppers in November and it has begun to bloom and set more peppers!

The first of March I decided to try to have early squash since it was so mild. So we started these in pots and they are about to bloom. I'm not sure how good they will do in pots but who knows, maybe we will have squash in April!

Redoing the upper garden!

We made our upper garden a couple of years ago. However, we have been battling the previously established Bermuda grass. That grass is vigorous and this shows the extensive root system that is everywhere.

Last summer to battle this matted mess in the walkways and it kept trying to work its way into the beds. So in August, we covered a lot of the upper garden with black plastic and kept it there throughout the winter to try to smother the grass.

We have uncovered it and to get it out before this grass starts to grow, Michael has been digging out roots and then we are putting down cardboard and a heavy mulch.

We have also redid the beds by taking out the soil, lining the beds and putting the soil back in! It's been a ton of work but we are keeping our fingers crossed that this will help rid us of this problem and we can get this garden established as well as the lower garden is. (Our spring broccoli is beautiful).

I've also cleaned out the lower garden from Henbitt, which is an edible winter ground cover that dies out as it heats up here in the South. It looks much worse than it was to clean out the beds. Underneath, I found some blooming strawberries already.

Smiling baby

Little Seth was born November 30, 2011. He seems to be a colicky baby and has had some issues with reflux.

That has made him cry and have fussy sleepless times.

So, it's great to see these smiles and laughter the other night during family home evening!