We spent much of the day out in the sun, and went for a nice bike ride. Beautiful weather this weekend, and rain possible tonight. I always hope for rain over night.

The daisies are in full bloom! I also picked our first small zucchini, one eggplant and a pepper, a head of broccoli, a bunch of chard, rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil this afternoon. Tonight for dinner, I think we’re going to try making ratatouille in mini bread loaves… on the grill, with garlic bread. Curios to see how that works!

Kallie says, “Happy 4th of July!”

Why do the herbs always need to be picked when there is no other food in the garden to season with them?

I have more chives and catnip than we will ever use, so if you’d like some… please let me know. Of course, last week I also planted catnip seeds that I bought at Monticello. Because one can never have enough catnip. (Maybe this is why we have a grey cat who visits our back yard now…)

My my terrific brother picked up three loads of these 16″ blocks for me at less than $1 per piece. There are 26 blocks per bed, bringing the project to a grand total to $52 for the frame. (Well, plus labor… but I needed the exercise!) Not too bad. The garden is on a slight hill and so they aren’t perfect. The beds are planted though! They are about 15′ x 4′ each (inside measurements 13.33′ x 2.67′).

I’m holding off on strawberries this year. Inside the beds are catnip, sage, thyme, chives, daisies and artemisia. I may have to move the artemisia out of the beds in a couple of years as it could get too large.

In the back of the bed, I planted alternating holes with last year’s onions that we missed. These will grow tall, and produce beautiful flower heads. I put basil in alternating holes around the rest of the bed, and plan to seed sunflowers in the other holes later this summer. The sunflowers need to be in bloom for cutting mid-September, so I won’t put those in until July.

Last year I put up a flimsy wood fence to add some definition to my garden’s border. It barely survived the summer, so I wanted to think of something different (and more permanent).

I have been reading a lot of garden blogs this spring, and saw pictures of some great beds formed from concrete blocks. I decided to give it a try, so this year I am putting in two beds lined with the blocks at the front of my garden.

These will be planted with perennial herbs and flowers (mostly transplanted from other areas in our yard). I am also going to try growing strawberries and basil in the holes.

… Also, this post is coming at you from my WordPress for Blackberry App! I can sit in the garden and blog now – woohoo!

Catnip, the earliest spring herb:

Also, it looks like the thyme wasn’t even phased by 4 months of freezing weather and more than four feet of snow. Ready to use!

I cut down all the catnip in the garden, which should give some of the other herbs a bit more room to grow. I’m sure well get a couple more good pickings from it this year.

Once it’s dried I’ll bag it and hide it away for a snowy day!

We’ve been getting an average of two inches of rain per week. While all of the herbs are growing well, the catnip has really surprised me. It is currently the tallest plant in our garden – even taller than the sunflowers (though they’ll catch up soon enough!)

So I’ve been busy this spring and my garden plot and seedlings aren’t what I pictured before we started this year. But thats ok. You can see the row I’ve had planted for quite a while.

Two weeks later we finished spreading the compost and tilling the garden.

Jessi’s half is on the left; Chris’s half is on the right. Let the games begin!

It’s been cool and cloudy in the morning giving way to sun and warmth come afternoon. The summer squash is winding down even if it doesn’t know it. It along with the other squashes, pumpkins and cucumbers continue to make more flowers even as their leaves turn yellow and then brown. Here is our last and sadly only third summer squash (a story told on another post) still on the vine.

Yesterday I planted kale, corn salad, raddichio and parsley. Hopefully its not too late. I haven’t gotten around to building or even thinking about cold frames yet and more distractions continue to present themselves.

Also pictured are the mysterious onion sprouts I discovered when preparing a seed bed for the Kale. Supposedly brassicas do well after an onion crop. We had no luck with cabbage or broccolli this spring/summer and the brussell sprouts are more sprouts than brussell at this point. I am not expecting much, but I doubt those damn cabbage moths are still around. Last week I planted some spinach and green onions. Some of the spinach seem to have been eaten up (along with some beet sprouts) and there wasn’t all that much to begin with, but the green onions look great.

Still needs to be planted (and soon): radishes, more carrots, cover crops, and eventually some lettuce and more corn salad.