Ready to take a quick spin around our garden?  I’ve posted about building the garden and planting it and the challenges associated with growing ANYTHING along Colorado’s Front Range.  This month I’m posting about our harvest!

Our garden is completely walled for wind and rabbits.  Unfortunately the birds are left as the sole garden predators, and they are decimating our strawberries.  The good news is, the strawberries are growing like crazy.  The bad news is, all the ripening ones have bites out of them.  My chicken wire cover does have some gaps and as I get some time I will get the gaps closed off.  I’m amazed at the tenacity of the birds, low-crawling under the low hanging chicken wire.  Strawberries are a BIG hit with them. 

The persistence of the birds with the strawberries makes me wonder how our raspberries will fare when they eventually start to produce.  I haven’t even looked it up to see if these healthy bushes will produce this year or next, but when they do, we will have to cover them.

The tomato plants went from hanging in there to growing like mad.  I have not measured them as I intended to do as a science project with the kids, but next year, we will definitely be measuring and charting the growth.

Most of the tomato plants are now bearing, and they’re all still green.  Again, I have no idea when these guys will turn ripe, so every day is a surprise to go see what is happening in the garden.  Are they red yet?  no?  maybe tomorrow..

Bell peppers are doing great, little tiny fruit is showing on the plants.

Tomatillo peppers, likewise.

Zucchini squash are growing huge, which I am very interested in.  My favorite vegetable is going to be in abundance very soon!

Look at these little guys in there!

Little jalapeno plants planted at the end of May have started slow after some initial cold weather, but they appear to be doing great now.  I actually have two tiny seedlings that survived the post-Mothers’ Day cold rain deluge.  They are clinging to life and may not bear at all through frost, tough to say.  I’m not betting on it.

And my cilantro bed.  Lovely to look at.  The birds like it too, since I have been planting more seeds every four weeks since the beginning of May.  Hopefully they’ll miss some of the seeds so I can have a continuous supply of cilantro all summer.

Here is our first harvest.  Fresh cilantro for tacos.  Yum!

My kids have been learning along with me out in the garden.  They know that plants need sun, water, room to grow, protection from pests and the elements, and good soil.  They know which of our garden is fruit and which is vegetable.  They know the parts of the plants.  They know that birds like to eat seeds and berries.  Lots of good science to learn out in the garden!

For more great garden photos and stories, check out the rest of the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge linkup below!

And if you have any bird deterrence hints, please leave a comment and share them with me!

It has been 2 1/2 weeks since our first garden plants went into their new home in our garden, and sadly, many of them have perished since these photos were taken.  The seedlings my boys and I lovingly planted and watered and hardened off went into the ground the second week of May.

The next three days it rained, the wind blew, hail fell, and the plants, unprotected by various garden coverings with which it would have been wise to cover them, croaked.

Apparently my tough love approach to gardening wherein the hardiest plants should have weathered the elements and lived on stronger to produce lots of wonderful vegetables and fruit for my family… is just not a wise approach.

On days 4 through 11 I watched the weather-beaten plants for signs of life as it continued to rain with very little sun, hitting the 40’s at night.

On day 12 I bought new plants from the local farmers market, abandoning my “introduce a few new varieties at a time and see how they do” approach, and coming home with tomatillo, red and yellow bell peppers, an indeterminate tomato hybrid, a roma tomato, zucchini seeds, and cilantro seeds.

So far, these plants, well irrigated and planted further along in the season, are doing fine.  As we roll into Memorial Day weekend, I have moved on to plant bed perennials elsewhere in our yard, and am (mostly) confident that something we have planted will grow and thrive.  I take a few lessons learned already into next growing season:

1. Don’t start seedlings again without letting them grow thicker and hardier first, which means either building a greenhouse or rigging some sort of UV lighting stuff in the basement, plus bigger pots, and who knows what else.  I may not start seeds again soon.
2. Wait until maybe Memorial Day to plant anything out there.
3. Follow local tomato planting guidelines, including walls-0′-water and planting horizontally so only leaves are exposed.

Here are some photos, some of commemorative nature..

First, our strawberry plants, which my youngest has claimed as his own, and which are already producing fruit, having weathered the elements with style, and which we are pleased to learn will come back next season.

Cilantro, looking rather peaked.  New seeds were sown right next to these now dead plants.  They are supposed to be hardy early season growers here.  Not these ones, though.

This is a raspberry bush from a national hardware store.  Having seen what is at the farmers’ market labeled raspberries, I’m sorry we even planted these sticks, and am watching them without much hope for success.  I saved my receipt.

The northwest corner of the garden, filled with jalapenos and zucchini, right before watering them in.  Too bad none of them made it.

Poor little guys, and they looked so healthy, too.

These are purchased tomato plants, and some of them are mysteriously bearing yellow leaves now, which google says means lack of nitrogen or not enough sun or water.   We’ve had very little sun, lots of rain, and they went into compost-rich soil.  Watching and waiting on that one.  Not sure, but they are hanging in there and I see little tomatoes on one..

Poor little gone jalapeno.

..and roma tomato.  Were I to do it again, this would have gone in horizontally without so much stem exposed to whip around in the wind.  They still got quite a bit of the crazy wind despite the completely walled garden.

Through the garden gate, with irrigation system and graduated fenceline.  Left side is windward.

Be sure to check out the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge linkup for lots of gardening progress with curriculum to match.

And please, by all means, if you know what is causing my tomato plants to turn yellow- leave a comment and let me know!

Garden.  Challenge.  We’re ready.

Our garden? Shown here.  a 16 x16 plot, scraped clean by tractor and ready for final assembly.  We have a water line set to run perpendicular to the southern side, and we’ll tap off it in east-west rows with soaker hoses.  You can’t grow anything around here without irrigation.

The dirt? Not good, so it will all be amended with topsoil and compost.

The compost? This year we’ll be buying compost, because we don’t yet have a bin for it.  We’ll be building our first pile this year.  It will be adjacent to the garden, made from pallets and rebar, which I saw on this website.  Looks like a good starting point!

The challenges: Frequent chinook winds and rabbits.  We live on the front range of Colorado, so nothing is left outside which could blow away.  We also have a healthy rabbit population which we are trying to keep in check, but in the meantime a fence should solve both issues, and we’ll be installing one surrounding the entire garden.

Growing season? Not yet… but soon.  Can’t plant anything around here until mid-May (they say after Mothers’ Day you’re pretty safe), so we have started seeds.

I started small.  I felt fairly confident with a limited selection to start, so on our kitchen counter, we have zucchini, cilantro, roma tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers.  This will be a good start to a salsa garden, and as I gain the know-how, we could add garlic, onion, and berry bushes.

Here are the cilantro seedlings we started in Mid-March.  My little preschooler helped with the planting and we’re observing them (scientifically, of course!) as they grow.

To aid in that endeavor, I printed this page from My First Science Notebook (eBook version).  His little drawings are simple, but good practice in the scientific skill of observation!

This is our first garden here, but I’m pretty certain the next steps are to start hardening the plants off with time outdoors on the warmer sunny days to come, then plant them in the garden the second week in May.

More to follow as we try to meet the garden challenge!  If you’re starting your garden too, leave us a comment and also head over to The Homeschool Village to join the Garden Challenge linkup!