I cannot even express my true excitement as I write this post because we. have. blooms.

Not just any blooms, we have vegetable bearing blooms!

LOOK!

Honestly, baby ANYTHING is cute as can be but baby vegetables new to their vines just make me giddy. Especially when my hands placed these plants in the ground and care for them to then feed my family.

Given, plants don’t need me. If there is a will, there is a true way when it comes to nature. I just like to think my weeks of weeding, watering, and mending soil play a good part.

This is week 4 four our warm-weather crops like squash, tomatoes, jalepenos, bell peppers, and cucumbers. Here in zone 7, we are having a very early spring and I took a gamble on that.

It has taken longer for my plants to look nice and green with a healthy glow but slowly and surely they are flourishing.

This is week 6 for my cold weather crops like onions, collard greens, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and strawberries and those are flourishing as well.

This year we decided to mulch the soil with straw to retain moisture in our soil as we realize we made a mistake with our layout.

I say mistake…gardening is one grand adventure and I’ll always be a student. I don’t think this is the kind of mistake that will make or break our harvest this year but we have to take a few extra steps…like mulching.

I’ve already learned so much this year from research and other gardeners which has me ALREADY planning next years garden and worried for this years.

Next year we plan to implement companion planting and intercropping methods to maximize our growing space and hopefully produce high quantities of food. I guess the grammatically correct term is “high intensity”.

I also wanted to update you all on our “back porch” garden with herbs and lettuce.

My heart leaps with joy out how well our plants are doing.

Oddly enough, I feel some degree of anxiety with losing a plant or two which I know can be inevitable for even the most experienced gardener.

We’ve already ate approximately 3 salads each from our lettuce plants which is crazy because it’s so early in the season! I’ll link the recipe we created last summer with them here.

How are your gardens doing?

With love, Elizabeth.