My tiny little victory garden

Since we've always been renters, I've never had the opportunity to plant a garden of my own and so have become quite adept at container planting. This summer is our first full summer as homeowners and while I started out prepared to plant in containers again, I wound up deciding to do a small garden in the backyard.

I have been working on clearing out some extremely overgrown forsythia (as you can see in the below photo) and doing so gave me the perfect spot to plant some veggies.

When I say small, I mean small! This is a 4'x4' frame, but I think I've managed to make good use of it!

We have a row of Portuguese Hot Peppers

Burpless Cucumbers

Three different tomatoes- an Early Girl

a Sun Gold Cherry

and a Patio Tomato

and a row of Green Bell Peppers


And because I've heard rumor that planting different herbs too near each other will make them start to take on each others flavors, I decided to stick with containers for my two basils.

My African Blue

and my Sweet Basil (still need to get one more plant for this pot)

This is all stuff we eat with regularity, so I figured best to start with what I know. if I am successful this summer, I think I'll double the size next year to include some lettuce, a few more tomatoes and maybe some melons of some sort...

I've also been working on a new flower bed. This entire bed (save for the two sunflowers I bought for $1 a piece) is made up of freebies given to me by my mom and mother in law. I've got Day Lilies, Iris, green and variegated Sedum, Coreopsis, Tiger Lilies, Lupine and Bee Balm. I call it the scraggler garden because it's sort of just a mishmash of stuff all plopped together. But I am patient and in a few years it will fill in and look lush and lovely! (Now if I could only get my weeds grass to grow in!)

And finally I leave you with a photo of a pretty yellow flower growing in my window box. I have no clue what it is- I got an 8 pack at Home Depot for $1.88 and there were none with tags that had names, lol! They bloom in red, magenta, yellow and white. Anyone have any idea what it is?


And a final reminder! Today is the last day to enter my $40 CSN Stores gift certificate giveaway!