Before Pictures

This past Friday we were predicted to have severe weather. Then, on Sunday we were under severe weather warning. Since we can't seem to avoid the inevitable and will probably get at least one severe storm this summer, I took some before shots to look at once all my hard work gets ruined from strong winds, tornadoes, hail, summer snow, or whatever other weather may come our way.

My delphiniums are in full bloom compared to a few weeks ago. They are gorgeous and everyone who walks by our house stops to comment. I have them on both sides of the front beds and they are going crazy. I wish they lasted all summer.

Here is one of 25 tomato plants we have. We grew cherokee purple, chocolate cherry, sun sugar, yellow pear, celebrity, and early girl varieties. They are going crazy! All I have done is sprinkle eggshells at the base for calcium. No fertilizer (besides the soil we added), and regular watering with some eggshells and they all look lush and have tons of little green fruit.

We upped the pepper count to 60 this year. We have 10 varieties and they are doing great. We had one cutworm casualty, but the rest have survived and are starting to fruit. We grew jalapeno, habanero, hot lemon, cayenne, relleno, anaheim, red, green, and orange bell (that's only nine...) and some other kind too. Oh chocolate bell!

This is one of 13 cucumbers. I planned on more, but we had many  cucumber cut worm deaths (I should post about the cutworm tragedies soon). Last year we lost all our cucumbers to hail and they never really grew back. Maybe my pickle dream will become reality this year. Plants look good so far.

Here is an aerial view of the garden. Eric climbed up our clothesline post and took this. I almost posted it next to the aerial view of Martha's garden on pinterest, but we aren't quite to that level in only our second year of gardening. However, we are quite proud of our weed management compared to last year and can't wait for tomatoes. So far we have harvested some lettuce (lots of lettuce) and basil.