Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

Erik and I went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum today. We missed out on most of the iris's and lady slippers but I still got to see the lilies and other beautiful flowers. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

2009 Garden

Okay, so it has been a while since I blogged... oops. In fact, the last time there was snow on the ground. It has been a cool spring here in Minnesota, but we definitely do not and have not had snow for almost three months now.

Erik and I have been busy working and playing. We started a garden at my parents in May. We tilled up the grass and added in some manure compost and some sand to loosen up all that clay they have out there. It is a 12 ft by 24 ft garden with mostly vegetables and some flowers for cutting.

Here is a list of what we planted in our garden:

Onions - red, yellow & white (8 of each)
Green Onions - I picked the first ones we planted thinking they were just grass coming up, but now the second planting is coming along.
Mixed Loose Leaf Lettuce
Cabbage
Romaine Lettuce
Jalapeno Peppers
Red Bell Peppers
Rhubarb
Tomatoes (heirloom, cherry & (I forgot))
Broccoli
Muskmelon
Buttercup Squash
Dill
Cucumbers
Sunflowers
Zinnias

Here is a picture of our garden in May (with Laura Bell in the background):

Here it is in June:

We had lots of weeds in June. Erik and I weed the garden and my Mom keeps it watered.
I also planted Marigolds in June to try and keep out rabbits and other small critters, but the Thomas and Peach (the cats) do a pretty good job of keeping things away too.

In June we finally got some warm weather and the garden really started growing.

We had an ant problem, so we've been using Cedar Oil to get rid of the ants and it has been working pretty well.

Here is the broccoli head just starting. This week I harvested 2 heads of broccoli.
Cabbage

Tomato flowers

This is the garden on Tuesday. Everything has gotten full! The broccoli is crowding the tomato plants. I cut off some of the broccoli leaves to give the tomatoes a bit more room. The tomato plants look like bushes they've gotten so big. The muskmelon has really grown out too and if all those flowers end up as fruit we are going to be eating a lot of melon. The onions are about the size of a tennis ball. The cucumbers are doing really well too and heading up the fence we built for them to climb. We have more lettuce then we know what to do with. I harvest some and you can hardly tell I've touched it. The zinnias and sunflowers are close to blooming.

Muskmelon flowers