Planting, waiting, growing

SO.....I've mentioned our gardens.....thought it was about time to post some pictures now that things are actually showing out of the ground...lol...first some prep work:

Thomas is working on his Family Life merit badge and had to do one chore to help the family BY HIMSELF....so he weeded the existing 2 garden beds and got the soil all turned up.  The box that you see in the background of the last picture is the frame for the 3rd garden bed.  Thomas and Ken put it together while Rebekah and I were elsewhere...they were just waiting for me to decide where I wanted it to go.

Once I decided that the new frame was pretty much where it needed to be, support stakes were pounded in and screwed to the frame - Thomas was excited to use his folding saw to help cut the stakes down even with the frame edges.  This is also part of his merit badge work - helping the family with a chore that is beneficial.....for the 3rd garden bed, he and Ken built the frame, Ken removed the sod which Rebekah then carried over to a bald spot in the yard (from removal of a crappy "play house" left by the previous owners), and they all worked to get it filled and top off the other 2 beds.

I don't have pictures of the planting going on, but that is what Thomas and I did.  Here are the results:

 Garden bed #1.  From left to right, we have planted iceberg lettuce (which didn't grow, so there is now oakleaf lettuce in there), collard greens, and cherry tomatoes.

 Garden bed #2, from left to right: bush beans, bush beans, corn.  The beans are doing great, but the corn is only just now starting to poke through the soil...it's all good, it will grow eventually :-)

Garden bed #3 - the newest bed - left to right: romaine lettuce, half a row of cucumbers and the other half carrots, and a row of cucumbers.  We have both salad cucumbers and pickling cucumbers.....guess we'll see which ones actually take.

The planter along the back of the house has the BEST growing medium....no matter what we've planted there, it takes off like wildfire.  This year, we moved the beefsteak tomatoes over here to see how well they do.

Our lone pepper plant.  The plants we've had the past few years haven't done very well.  This is a different brand of plant, bought from a different location, so maybe it will do better....this is also the first time we've had a pepper in the planter....it's already got some tiny peppers showing, but the plant hasn't actually gotten any taller.

Rebekah wanted to grow strawberries, so we put plants in last year (eh) and added some more this year.  Had to put the fencing up when we caught Brady (the chocolate lab) sniffing around them.  The second picture shows the start of our strawberry crop - she's already pulled one ripe one off and eaten it!
In addition to the gardens for food, we've also put in some new flowers in the side flower garden.  We are hopeful that these will actually flourish and add some color to that area.  The only sad part is that I had to remove one of my lavender plants because it had gotten dried out and wasn't growing....but it wasn't too sad a moment since I checked the second lavender plant only to discover that it was going bonkers and needed to be trimmed back some.  Will be drying out what I cut....but only after the latest round of beef jerky is finished :-)