Mid May Veggie Garden

I have to start out with some flower pictures first. Then I'll show you what is growing on in the gardens this week. 

Iris flowers to me, are the sign of May and they always grow around Mother's Day. So I call them Mothets day flowers. Although I bought some cut Lillies for my mom on Mother's day last week.

This past Monday, Ashley and I went down to the creek and had a little fire while we relaxed and enjoyed nature. Here are some wild flowers and such by the creek...

After Monday this week, I mowed, weeded, and sowed seeds around the garden. It was a weedy mess last week, and now that I have weeded, my plants can finally breathe! I applied some of my own compost around the vegetable plants as well.

The garden bed here, I cleaned yesterday. In addition to weeding, I applied my entire compost pile that I have been making for the last 6 months. 

My hope for this garden bed is to plant squash, corn and beans.  

The next garden bed here is full of yarrow and turnip plants flowering so I won't have many weeds to grub out. Yarrow is supposed to put nitrogen back into the soil, so I see this wild perennial as a plus in my garden. I started with a couple of these plants that I pulled from a field, and now it is a fully functioning patch on its own. 

Similarly, the next garden beds are basically my cilantro patches. There is probably 40 or more cilantro plants clustered in these 2 garden beds. I have inter planted spinach, arugula, peppers, lettuce, radish, and much more here. Now, the key is to keeping these beds watered, fertilized with compost, and protected from critters (which are all challenges as a gardener. 

The remaining garden beds have been weeded and I planted carrots and various things around the established patches of strawberries and radishes growing. I was able to pull up some beautiful radishes this week...

The garden beds here still look like a mess but it's really only because it's a bad picture. I have to keep the netting on every single bed to keep my cats out and to keep birds out. My cats want to scratch in the soil to use it for their personal litter box and the birds like to peck the soil to eat the seeds I've sowed. 

As you can see, the netting I lay on the garden beds doesn't lay totally flat as I have mature radish and kale plants flowering. I have many more vegetable seeds to plant here. 

In front of my garden, the blueberry plants are doing great! There's lots of blueberries on all of the bushes but my fear is birds pecking the fruits. I have used netting in the past to protect them but I'm using that same netting now for these garden beds. It is frustrating!

At my other garden, I have to till more so I can plant beans and corn as well. In my other garden, I have potatoes and peas growing. I have planted melons and squash seed but I haven't been up theret this week yet to check on this other garden.

I'll keep you posted!