Summer Garden 2014-Update

Our backyard this year has undergone a little transformation since last year. Nothing major, but every single one of my plants from last year didn't make it through the crazy snow weather we had this past winter, so I had to replace a lot. My sago palms, oleander, and calla lilies all came back, but everything else succumbed to the cold. I had envisioned a tropical oasis in the backyard with the pool and all, but seeing as how you can't count on Louisiana weather to ever be stable and normal, we had to go with some good ole' perennials. Here's a view of my beds and this will probably stay the same from here on out. I'll end up just replacing my few annuals I plant every season. 

Perennials: knock-out roses, sago palm, abelia, and salvia. 

Annuals: vinca and angelonia

Our garden seemed to get off to a slow start, but is moving right along now! A couple of weeks after planting, I cut and laid down black weed blocker in between all the rows to help keep weeds out of the garden. It seems to be helping a lot. Now when I weed I only have to get what is on the top of the row. 

This is the main bed. We have (from the left) two rows of snap beans-which aren't doing very well at all this year, three rows of lima beans, and four rows of purple hull peas. 

A friend of Eli's at school gave us some popcorn seed to plant. I knew I didn't have enough room to do more than one row like you're supposed to so I only planted one row just so Eli could see the corn grow. A couple of weeks passed and I made room for another row just to see if they would be able to cross-pollinate, but I think I planted them too many weeks between each other. Oh well, once the snap beans make all they're going to make, we might pull them up and plant two rows of corn. 

This is the second bed that we added this year. From the direction of the picture you'll see three rows of okra, three rows of sweet potatoes, three zucchini mounds and three squash mounds.

Sweet potato vines

Zucchini and Squash

You'll notice we had to replant a couple of squash so they're not as big yet. 

This was the view of our garden right after we planted....

This is the same view and how it looked as of June 15th. 

And this last picture is for those of you that think our whole backyard is nothing but a garden. Haha! Our lot actually looks a a lot like a baseball diamond. It's a huge wedge in the backyard and it's deceiving from the front. When you walk out onto our back patio, the pool is directly in front of you and the garden is on your left along the fence. On the other side of the pool is nothing but space. I walked to the other side of the fence and took a picture facing the garden so you could see that we still have plenty of room to play. Of course...I am already making plans for additional plants. I'm seriously addicted to blueberries right now so I might just be planting rows of blueberry bushes soon. We'll just have to wait and see :)