Garden Update – June 2024 - Our City Homestead

xfacebookinstagrampinterest

Happy June!! It’s time for Our City Homestead Garden Update! Even though we live in the city, we can still garden! That’s what our garden updates are all about — to share with you what we are growing in the city and how we are doing that!

I am so glad we finally have our garden beds. We need to start filling them with dirt and begin planting! It seems a little late, but we should do alright since it has been a cold spring!

I love having a garden to grow vegetables! It’s important to grow our own food, even if it is just a few veggies in a garden box, planter or flower pot. And we have various shrubs and trees which will provide fruit — eventually!! It’s all about planning, and starting today for tomorrow!

Let’s get started!

Here is the Fall Red Apple Tree. I’m so happy so see all the blossoms!

And here is the Goodland Apple Tree. It’s blossoming too which is great!

We have two narrow garden beds in the front. They are 10’ long, 35” high and 2’ wide. Here we planted herbs, peppers, tomatoes and rhubarb.

Here’s the herbs. Let’s take a closer look at what we planted!

We planted parsley, multiplier onions, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, purple basil, regular basil and chives.

And in the garden bed next to it is jalapeño peppers, habanero, chili peppers, Red Robin Tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, stevia and Victoria rhubarb.

Time to add dirt to these garden boxes!

Here’s the garden bed with some dirt and we planted the corn that was started from seed.

Here’s the different shrubs we bought — honeyberry (also called haskap), blueberry, saskatoon, and we have some strawberries.

Then June 3 we got a downpour! It rained 1/2” in just half an hour and we got pea-sized hail. It was enough to flood out the low parts of the yard! the flowers got pelted, but they’re ok.

Once it dried up a bit, we added more dirt! These garden beds hold a lot of dirt!!

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”

— Alfred Austin

By evening, we got a bunch of dirt in the large garden bed and planted potatoes.

Now to cover the potatoes up and hill them!

Time to plant!! It’s been a gloomy day!

We are planting beans, carrots, peas, beets and carrots.

We used a board to mark our rows which worked really well!

In a couple weeks, the sprouts have sprouted!

Here’s the large garden bed. There’s patty pan squash also planted here, eggplant, zucchini, basil, corn and dill plus the beets, carrots, beans, corn and potatoes.

Here’s the apple tree — the blossoms are starting to fall off. The sun is warm and the sky is blue. Such a beautiful day!

Here’s the other shrubs: 2 honeyberry bushes that we planted last fall that we tried to grow at the community garden, 2 blueberry bushes and the chokecherry.

Here’s the flowers.

And the rhubarb! It’s growing great!

Time to pick!!

Here’s the backyard before we plant all the shrubs and tree!

In this garden bed is a raspberry bush we planted last fall, but we are moving it to the front yard.

And here is this bed with a bit more dirt, and some mulch. We decided to put mulch in the middle and one side so we can walk inside. This garden bed is much larger than I anticipated, so planting in the middle would make it hard to get to the centre plants.

Here’s where the honeyberries will be planted. we also got a few yards of dirt delivered to help fill up these beds.

The yard is looking much better! So much work but it’ll be all worth it. We are on our way to being more self sufficient so we can rely on the stores a little less. Of course we are in the city so we cannot have farm animals, but it’s a step in the right direction! This is the idea that inspired Our City Homestead.

Here’s the little garden. I love seeing things sprout!

Here’s the large garden — not too much happening yet.

Honeyberries are doing great!

Here’s the cherry tree.

Gooseberry bush. When I was little I used to go to the garden with gramma and eat so many gooseberries — I loved them! They were large and the plant was huge! I’m looking forward to this gooseberry bush growing into that!

Here’s the blueberry bush. There’s a few berries on which is exciting!

Here’s the saskatoon. No berries on this year.

Strawberries are looking good so far. This area gets a lot of sun, so we’ll see how they do!

Here’s the rhubarb. It’s a Holstenier Blut. I’ve never had this type of rhubarb before, so we’ll see how it goes!

Here’s my daughters’ garden beds all planted.

We bought a strawberry hanging basket full of strawberries so we can enjoy some berries this summer!

The cherries are ripening which is exciting! The tree had a few cherries on when we bought it.

Here’s the honeyberry bush and blueberry bush. The blueberries are starting to ripen in the past few days!

Here’s the little garden. More things have sprouted!

Here’s the potatoes — finally up! Yay!!

Here’s other quadrants in the large garden bed — there’s a few things sprouting! And we put mulch in the centre so we can walk in and out without sinking in the dirt or getting muddy!!

Tomatoes my daughter ‘H’ grew from seed are doing well.

Here’s the front yard shrubs/bushes. There’s the raspberry and 2 honeyberries that we dug up from our plot at the community garden and they are doing so much better here! We also have the burning bush which doesn’t produce food but turns a beautiful orange and red in the fall time! We also have the 2 blueberries which I thought were completely dead from the wild rabbits eating them all winter long, but they’re coming back to life! And lastly, we have the chokecherry.