Our Summer Garden.

Summer is here! It’s hot, humid, the mosquitoes are out in full force and we are reaping the benefits of all that hard work this spring by bringing in baskets and baskets of fresh produce from our backyard vegetable garden.  Happiness.  I’ve been trying to get a couple shots of the summer garden to post, but the plants are so huge I have had a terrible time figuring out how to photograph it!  Before I post what the garden looks like today, I found these old photos of what our backyard looked like when we first moved to Durham.  I’m pretty proud of the transformation because John and I designed and did ALL of the work ourselves.  It’s SO satisfying to see hard work pay off!  So here is what our yard looked like before…

the vegetable garden is on the far side of the patio and this is what that empty space looks like now…

our cut flower/pollinator garden around the edge of the patio…

we finally got around to graveling in our paths and around the vegetable plot.  Given that we have no grass, I think it makes a difference!

I adore these cute little sunflowers.  They are only about 2 ft tall and form a border around the outside of the veggie plot (in between the baby blueberry bushes).

Hayston likes them too.

garden phlox from our cut flower garden (the butterflies and humming birds love it)!  All those pollinators are great for encouraging pollination and lots of flowering for our veggies and flowers=fruit.

some purple cone flower, attracts yellow finches and other small birds. So good for keeping the pests in the veggie garden under control plus the flowers are beautiful and watching the birds is just an added bonus!

Here’s a look at one of our loaded tomato bushes…we’ve probably harvested about 20 tomatoes already from this plant alone and I’m making fried green tomatoes tonight!

Our giant zucchini plants (pretty hard to capture in one frame).

Early Girl tomatoes…love them!

peppers are on their way!

a couple Japanese eggplants are almost ready.

a ton of purple bush beans!

and some baby cucumbers.

I hope John and I encourage all of you that you can transform your backyard too without spending a ton of money or having to call in the professionals.  And I have a number of recipes featuring all of these yummy summer veggies coming very soon!