Garden Boxes

Our garden is in full swing, and we are done planting now for a while. All our seedlings , which did really well this year, are outside and in the ground, which is such a relief. We generally use the square foot gardening method, and we've expanded gradually over the past few years. In addition to our garden boxes, I also have flowers and herbs growing along our fence, along with some green beans and cucumbers. But for now I'll just show you what we have growing in our garden boxes. 

Here's the box we have just outside our back door off the kitchen.  You can see that we're using plastic laundry line to mark off each square foot. This box was originally 8x2 feet, but we've expanded it into an 8x4 foot box. Right now I've got spinach, kale, swiss chard, radishes, carrots and various types of lettuce coming up in this box. The big, bushy-looking thing taking over its allotted square is some oregano from last year. I need to move it to a different spot. 

And here's our main garden area, on the west side of our house. We now have three 12x4 foot boxes, and back by the fence one 4x4 foot box. In the corner of the fence is our compost bin. The box closest to the camera in this picture is where we put all our tomatoes, and I also direct-seeded some summer squash and zucchini there. The next box has peppers, eggplant, beets, kohlrabi, carrots, radishes, cabbage and cauliflower. Then the last of the largest boxes has strawberries in about two-thirds of the box, and broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage in the rest of the box. The small box by the fence has spinach and several types of lettuce. Whew!

Here's a closer look at our little strawberry patch:

And the brassicas on the other end of that box:

And just because I thought this was cute, from a couple of weeks ago the first true leaves on a kale sprout:

And the beginnings of red lettuce:
We're looking forward to some yummy salads this summer!