The Garden

These are the latest pictures of our garden as of last night! Hope you enjoy!!!

This is our herb garden which is located on the north side of the house, two steps out our back door. These aren't all the herbs we have, just a select few that I use a lot. It makes it easy when I'm cooking to just walk out the back door and snip a few! Herb gardens like this are a great idea for people who do not live in the country and don't have room for a full-size garden. Fresh herbs make dishes much more tasty!

These are my herb signs that my momma got me, aren't they cute??? This is Rosemary, one of my absolute favorite herbs. Rosemary goes great with any potato dish and very good in sauces!

This is basil, he's a little small right now, but he had a rough time in the hail storm we had. He's doing much better now. Basil is great in any Italian dish, dried or fresh. I like to put fresh basil on my sandwiches and wraps. It's also adds extra flavor to throw in a couple of basil leaves in a fresh salad!

This is oregano, I usually just dry oregano unless I'm making a dip or salad. When I slow cook any Italian recipe I almost always use my dried herbs.

This is thyme, which is amazing in any meat recipe. I especially love to rub fresh thyme leaves on my steak.

This is down at the garden which is located south of the cattle pens, on the side of a hill with a pretty little creek running to the east and south of it. These are beans and okra. In the last few days the okra has really grown a lot!!!

This is a view of the garden from the north side, just south of the pens. We have sunflowers planted in a row by the pens. You can see the creek to the east in the background. To the right is where the garden starts.

These are our pretty bell peppers. Last year we only planted three and could have used more so we planted five this year. We planted regular bell peppers a long with some heirloom peppers. One plant has three about ready to pick! My mouth is already watering!

This is one of my baby tomato plants that I just got in the ground last week. I was tempted to just stop at our one tomato bed, but I had extra plants from the greenhouse and just couldn't resist. So I planted a few extra plants here and there in the garden.

We have two rows of beds in our garden. We just added this bed this spring. This is a view from the south looking north towards the pens. Yes I know the corn is small. But I'm ok with that, you can plant two crops of corn a summer and I have been a busy little bee. I just planted them late last week and they are already 7-8" tall. Not too shabby. Above the corn there are two tomato plants at each end, and an artichoke plant in the middle that is dying... I'm going to replace him with something else, just haven't decided what yet! The third bed has our bell peppers, jalapenos and tomatillos to the right. The fourth bed has our okra, beans and another tomato plant. Told you I placed my extra tomato plants in random places!

This is the tomato bed, I built the exclosures all by myself! In this bed we have five tomato plants including a few heirlooms, beefmaster and a yellow jubilee. Our plants were about twice this big, but I trimmed them back quite a bit when I built the exclosures. We have no problem with growing tomatoes. They were about nine feet tall last year. I can hear BLT's and homemade salsa calling my name!

This little guy is just bigger than golf ball size. It's a an heirloom tomato.

This is just a better look at the exclosures I built. Last year our tomatoes laughed at us with the tomato cages we put out, so I had to build something a bit more sturdy this year!

These are basil plants on steroids...or manure if you're a plant! They are going crazy, I have five basil plants in our herb bed in the garden and I already need to start cutting them back to dry for the winter, I love it!

These are our tomatillo plants, which are about 4-5' tall already and producing tomatillos by the hundreds! Green salsa, come to momma!

This is our brocolli which just started producing heads last week. I have had a heck of a time keeping the bugs off our brocolli and cauliflower. I guess its the thickness and softness of the leaves, I have to spray them at least once a week!

These are the pretty curly Q's on the beans...so I took eighty pictures of them...




This is a view of the garden from the northwest corner at the top of the hill, try to ignore the fact that I have needed to mow for the past 5 days...

Here you can see the other bed to the east. Again quit looking at the tall grass/weeds.

The boss, who just woke up from a long winter's nap, coming outside to make sure I'm going good work.

Dixie loves the garden...

Except the flies, if she even hears the sound of a fly she starts snapping at the air...

She likes to sit at the top of the hill in the garden while I'm working, and bark at any car she thinks is driving too slow on the road which is 300 yards away. My little guard doggy!

Gotcha :)

The first tomatillos we harvested. Green salsa is calling my name!!!

Adam said he just had to get my Jack Daniel's shirt in the picture.