We’re just about to enter the best time of the year for gardeners… time to eat!

There is a lot of space left in the garden for sunflowers. We cleared out a good section in Chris’s half of the garden (not pictured….) for sunflowers as well, so assuming my planting schedule is fairly accurate, we’ll be set for the wedding this September.

The perennial beds have filled in quite a bit! I put basil in the holes in the front, and just weeded/thinned that out this weekend. I had originally planned on strawberries, but I decided that I like my concrete beds so much that I’m going to build another one, twice the size of each of these, along the south side of the garden (starting where this one ends, heading in the opposite direction). I’ll use part of that for strawberries next year.

In the back of the perennial beds are second year onions, planted for their really neat flower heads. Those are just now starting to bloom.

I picked a few heads of broccoli this afternoon (one was just about to flower, oops!). The temperatures are going to rise this week so I hope some of the smaller heads will hold out for a few days. I started these in early March, and they are just now producing, nearly 120 days later. They’re supposed to be “55 days” – not sure if this is an indication that our soil could use some more work, or if this is normal for Minnesota gardening. Any cole crop growers want to chime in? We’ve *never* had Brussels sprouts mature before October, and we also start those the first week in March.

Also above (click on the picture for a better view), there are daisies and a volunteer sunflower in front of the broccoli; tomatoes behind. In the next row is another sunflower and radishes, and more tomatoes.

Carrots and chard above. Last year my carrots were a lot thicker; we had really strong rainfall (3″ in a day or two) a few days after I seeded these, so I’m guessing a lot of the seeds washed away.

Another shot of the garden, from the back. Lots of room for fall crops and more sunflowers!

That’s what we pulled today!

I’m hosting a baby shower tomorrow, so the dill went in the potato salad and the radishes are cleaned and ready to eat!

I planted four different varieties of radish. Even with the hot weather earlier this month they aren’t very spicy. A few are a bit too large, and there are a lot more where these came from!

Broccoli and zucchini are next, within the week!

Onions are biennial plants, which means the first year they make bulbs (which you typically eat). If you don’t harvest onions the first year, they will come back the second year and go to seed (flower).

Last year we missed quite a few onions, and I transplanted them into the back of my perennial herb and flower beds. They are now as tall as I am, and just starting to flower!

My nearly two-year-old nephew visited last weekend, and enjoyed eating these out of the garden. Puck also found them…. go figure!

These are finally starting to produce after two years. It’s a pretty small bed, so not enough for jams or pie yet, but they are a nice sweet morning or afternoon treat!

Once again this year, I planted both yellow and green summer squash (zucchini): Yellow Sebring and Green Elite Zucchini. I placed a row cover over half of the young plants hoping to keep out vine borers this year. I haven’t seen evidence of the borers yet on any of the plants, but it is still early.

With any luck, we’ll be eating zucchini this weekend!

A week of rain followed by 100º heat makes me forget what state I live in! But it does wonderful things for tomatoes in Minnesota. The tomatoes tripled in size in a week after the weather we had early June.

Next year I need to invest in some taller tomato cages (or build some).

This is probably the greenest my garden has ever been; there is a lot of space left to fill in with sunflowers for our wedding this September. I haven’t posted pictures for a while, so I have a few pictures lined up for this week: flowering onions, zucchini, strawberries… stay tuned!

A few days of 100ºF heat is all it takes to turn asparagus into a giant, flowering bush!

This is our third season gardening here, so we haven’t harvested asparagus yet. Unfortunately, it is planted in a bad location; it was one of the first things we put in the yard and didn’t give much thought to where the garden would go before we planted it, so it is awkwardly right between the garden and the compost pile, and it gets walked over a lot.

I’ve read that asparagus is difficult to transplant, but I may try moving it to a better location.

Three months after moving in, we had most of the yard fenced in for the dogs. It’s a big yard, so we picked the cheapest option with the intention of turning it green.

The first summer, we transplanted a bunch of wild grapes from my parents’ cabin. I thought they were a complete failure but they are doing very well now!

A few months later, a local restaurant called “The Vineyard” closed its doors, and I called up the owner to ask about their vines. Obviously, a restaurant named “The Vineyard” is required to have some pretty spectacular vineage going on outside their front door. The plants were more than 30 years old and too large to transplant, but we spent a day taking cuttings, and two days rooting them. I didn’t think they amounted to anything either – but there are quite a few coming up this spring!

The second summer, I bought six “real” grape vines.

Those are doing very well this year. But after doing a ton of Google research on “how to make a green fence”, I realized that we needed way more than some cabin and restaurant transplants to green our fence.

Being the impulsive buyer that I am, and also the impatient type who doesn’t want to wait 10 years for the wild grapes to take over…. I found a Minnesota Vineyard, and ordered an ungodly amount of grapes.

This is a Somerset Seedless grape from Great River Vineyard, which is located in Lake City, Minnesota. I ordered 100 vines from them (5 different varieties) – and all but *maybe* 5 of them look like this, or better.

We didn’t do anything special with planting; simply dug holes around the fence, plopped in the vines, covered and watered.

The grapes are planted about 2 feet apart (5 grape vines per 10-foot fence section), and since this is the first year I don’t have much else to report! I did take four of the best edible varieties and plant them on my arbors in the garden; the primary purpose of these fence-grapes is to cover the chain link and provide some privacy. But we do hope to enjoy a small crop every year for table eating, jams, and maybe one day wine.