peas

It’s been a busy time here at Simple Life and Home, hence the “late” in our late spring garden report. For starters (or finishers, depending on how you look at it), we wrapped up our fourth year of homeschooling. Woo hoo! Of course, we’ve been working steadily toward getting the garden planted at the same time.

Back in February, we started some of our plants from seed. This was a new experience for me, since we planted mostly heirloom seeds in the hopes that we can harvest the seeds this fall and start again next winter. (Fingers crossed!)

cherry-tomatoes

We had already begun this seed-harvest journey last fall, when my daughter gathered several seeds from our favorite yellow cherry tomatoes. (These things taste like candy! I will never grow another cherry or grape tomato variety again!)

harvesting-tomato-seeds

To harvest the seeds, she simply squeezed the seeds out of a few of our late-season tomatoes, spread them out on a paper towel (about an inch apart), and let them dry completely. Then she cut out each square of paper towel, seed in the middle, and stored them all winter.

covering-seeds

In late February, we placed the seeds on top of our starter mix, paper towel included, and covered them with more mix. The result? Baby cherry tomato plants! First seed-harvesting and planting experience: a success. We’ll let you know how the growing and harvesting goes. 🙂

Our late spring garden report includes:

lettuce

thriving lettuce…

peas

peas and carrots…

onions

onions…

broccoli-and-cabbage

broccoli and cabbage…

spring-potatoes

and potatoes. Yes, they need a bit of weeding, but everything has sprouted, and our natural deer and rabbit repellant is keeping the pests at bay, so I’m praying for a good spring harvest.

We’ve also planted our summer garden, including some tomatoes, peppers, green beans, cucumbers, watermelon, zucchini, corn, and pumpkins, but so far I have no great pictures to show. With any luck, these recent spring rains and warm sunny days will do their thing, and we’ll have more to post soon.

first-strawberries

Last but not least, we have an amazing strawberry crop this year! After two years of patience and weeding, we’re getting berries like this. Two days of picking has provided enough berries for six half-pint jars filled with freezer jam, which I just put up this evening.

freezer-jam

So yes, we’ve been busy. It’s exciting to see some of that effort pay off. What about you? Anybody have a garden report they’d like to share? If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a garden geek, and any garden news is super fun in my book, so do tell!