The Gardens at The Sticks

We've finally gotten all the plants for our gardens into the ground.  What a wonderful feeling!  LOL  We have made several areas into 'culinary' planting beds.

The herb bed in front of the house is doing well.  That grey mess in front is the ground cloth for a gravel walkway we are putting in... as soon as our yard dude gets some free time to bring his bucket tractor over to move the gravel in place here and several other areas.

All three of the rosemary (far right) made it through the cold winter and I added another.  We use a lot of rosemary.  Next over is the chives, garlic, and on the back onions.  After those is my oregano.  The beast is trying to take over!  Laying low to the right of the oregano are my sprawling thyme plants.  Only one survived the winter so I added those two freebies.  The other beast of the herb bed is the sage which is getting cut back hard next week.   Next is my French tarragon.  One made it through winter and I have put in five more.  They have such a hard time with the hot TN summers.  

And finally at the end of the bed I have my basil.  It was at the beginning of the bed but we've put in something in that area (you'll see soon) so they went down to where the tomatoes used to be.

Or maybe I should say... where the tomato IS!  That little volunteer came up and we are letting it grow.  I look forward to seeing what we get from it.

The rhubarb is doing great!

I've planted 18 of those free parsley plants all around the rhubarb bed.  (I still have 15 parsley left!  I plan on giving them away to my Sunday School class.)

The rhubarb is starting to color!

Next up is our vegetable garden...

This area used to be our rose garden... but the Japanese beetles drove Himself buggy so the roses moved up to my Mom's garden where the beetles aren't.

(Man!  I'm seeing a half dozen or more projects I need to work on in this photo!)

Another view of the veggies.  We hadn't planned on the fence (Thank you Geri for the chicken wire!)

This is why we have fence!  Those ungrateful deer chewed up two tomatoes and my two poblano peppers.  Thankfully they will survive their maiming.

Looking down from the deck.  The eggplant are doing well (top of photo).  And the bright green leaves at the bottom of the photo are on my sweet bay tree.

I need to start tying up the tomatoes.

Oh... here are the varieties I planted.

Cucumbers are doing well too.  They are loving the rain we have gotten (two inches on Monday!).

On the left side of the garden we planted five freebie spearmint plants.  The area is very rough and I hope they completely take over and fill the area.

Finally are our two (bargain clearance) blueberry plants.  They are going to be a focal point in an upcoming project.

First harvest!  LOL

We are looking forward to much larger harvests!

This is the start of our gardening.  I plan to add at least one new culinary bed each year.