The 2025 garden

The vegetable garden is finally all planted! This year I have more things planted in it than ever before, and it's a combination of the older raised bed, a new raised bed, and several containers, including a small plastic kiddie pool where I'm growing Bibb lettuce and baby carrots. As an experiment, we're even growing a little bit of corn! Gregg's been pestering me to try growing corn for a while now, ever since he found out a friend of his grows a few small patches of it in his backyard garden and has success. After homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn is his favorite summer garden treat. When we saw some 6-packs of corn seedlings ("Peaches and Cream" variety) at Lowe's the other day, I thought what the heck. They were $5.99 and Gregg was excited by the idea. Since it was an impulse buy we hadn't planned where to put it, though. Our solution made me laugh: we used the large empty spaces on either side of my new rose! *

Anyway, here's the list of what's growing in my garden this year:

Tomatoes:

Nine heirlooms started from seed: 3 Eva Purple Ball, 3 Hillbilly Potato Leaf, 2 Berkeley Tie Dye, 1 Mexico Midget Cherry.

Five hybrid determinates bought as seedlings: 1 Heatmaster, 2 Bush Goliath, 1 Better Bush, 1 Roma.

Peppers:

One each of Serrano, Jalapeno, Mammoth Jalapeno, Tabasco, Cowhorn, Giant Marconi, and Sheepnose Pimento.

Cucumbers: two Boston Pickling and one Armenian, all planted in large containers.  

Also:

Rattlesnake beans (thanks Mary!), Yellow Crookneck squash, Aunt Mae's Bibb lettuce, and Paris Market carrots. Peaches and Cream corn. 

I mixed together three different varieties/packets of marigold seeds and planted them down the center of the two raised beds to go along with the Marietta marigolds that have reseeded themselves from last year. I like using a living mulch of marigolds around my tomatoes to deter pests and attract pollinators. I've got parsley and basil started from seed that's close to ready to put in the ground, too. 

Here's a few pictures of the garden along with a chart I drew to keep the placement of everything straight. 

* We made a bed for Eustacia Vye that will be big enough to accommodate her plus two more English shrub roses next year. I haven't even seen the first flower yet and I'm already obsessing over what the next two roses will be. I can see how the madness begins!

She's leafing out!