A Spring Garden Tour

Come with me and take a Peek at my Home Garden

Since it is (finally!) spring, I thought you might enjoy a sneak peek at my home garden as it’s beginning to wake up from its (much too long) winter’s sleep.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Ok, these aren’t plants, but they’re a constant (and welcome!) presence in my garden. You can see a male cardinal peeking around from the back of the feeder on the left, a male rose-breasted grosbeak in front of him, and a tufted titmouse on the other feeder. The grosbeaks just showed up this week, they’re always a sure sign of spring.

I was hoping to get a picture of the orchard oriole who’s been hanging around, but he wasn’t cooperative.

The hummingbirds also aren’t so cooperative when I try to get their pictures, but we have lots of them around. In fact, it’s almost hazardous to walk in my yard because they keep buzzing past my head!

You see, it’s hummingbird mating season and the males are VERY busy trying to compete with each other, much to the detriment of the humans who just happen to be in their way!

I did have a really neat experience last week with a hummingbird, though. My mom and I had just gotten home from the grocery store and I saw a hummingbird fluttering at her front window. It quickly became apparent that he was stuck.

He must have dive bombed the window and gotten his beak stuck in the screen. I was able to grasp him as gently as I could and pull him out of the screen. He did squeak at me, so I’m hoping I didn’t squeeze too hard trying to pull him out, but he flew away really quickly, so I’m guessing he was all right.

I had absolutely no idea hummingbird feathers were so soft! I kind of wish he could have stayed just a little bit longer in my hands….

This is my purple cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera). I love this tree. It’s still quite small since I only planted it a couple of years ago, but as you can see, it has beautiful pink flowers in the early spring and gorgeous purple foliage the rest of the year.

And, in case you were wondering, it’s actually a plum tree, not a cherry tree. They do eventually bear edible fruit, but mine hasn’t yet. As they are self-fertile, I’m guessing it just isn’t old enough yet.

Does anything say spring more than lilacs? I love the smell of them wafting through the yard! Unfortunately, I don’t think there are going to be very many blooms this year, I’m pretty sure the never-ending rain has made them unhappy.

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And these are my Miss Kim miniature lilacs. They apparently liked all the rain because they’re loaded with buds, as you might be able to see in the picture.

I really like the Miss Kim lilacs. They take up a bit less space than regular ones, and as you can see, they’re very reliable (and prolific!) bloomers. If you’d like to get your own, you can find them here.

You may already know, I love hostas! In case you missed it, I talked all about them here. I have probably 25 or 30 around the house, several different varieties. If I could find places to put more, I would.

My pea seedlings are doing well. They don’t seem at all upset by the cool, wet spring we’re having (unlike the rest of us!) If you need plans for a DIY garden trellis like the one in the pic, just head here and sign up for my FREE resource library. You’ll get tons of freebies, including the plans for the trellis, which has worked equally well for peas, beans and cucumbers in my garden.

I love this little Japanese maple. It’s a tree that I grafted at school several years ago. It spent a couple of seasons in a pot because I couldn’t figure out where to put it, but when we removed an old, decrepit vegetable box, I decided it was a good place for a Japanese maple.

Now, to find some other plants to put around it……..

And here are some more tiny veggies. These are beet seedlings in a raised bed hubby built for me last year. I tried to grow beets from seed this year, but they didn’t sprout well, so I bought these.

The problem with buying beet seedlings is that they don’t like to be separated, and the nurseries seem to always plant their seeds so thickly. Anyway, we’ll see how these do, I just planted them a week ago.

Don’t you love the color of these azaleas? This bush doesn’t do as well as it probably could just because of its location, but I don’t want to move it and risk killing it.

And please excuse the messy flower bed under the bush. Like I said, it’s been raining nonstop for what feels like years.

And, you may already know this, but you shouldn’t do spring flower bed cleanup until daytime temperatures are consistently above 50F. Hibernating beneficials use the debris to overwinter and don’t reliably come out until temps are that warm, so you risk disturbing or killing them if you clean up your beds before then.

The exception to this, though, is veggie beds. You absolutely should clean up your veggie beds as soon as you harvest. For instance, I’ll take care of my pea plants as soon as they finish producing, whether or not I use that section of garden for another, later crop.

This cuts down greatly on disease and insect problems in the vegetable garden.

This is my catmint. It doesn’t look very impressive yet, but once it’s covered in lavender-colored flowers, it is sooo pretty, and the bees and butterflies absolutely LOVE it! It literally buzzes in the summer when it’s blooming, and it blooms for months. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Although catmint is a member of the mint family, I haven’t found it to be invasive like some mints can be. It’s been in this spot for quite a few years and the clump gets bigger every year, but that’s about it. It can apparently be dug up and split, but I haven’t tried that yet. Since it has plenty of room where it is and it isn’t looking sickly, I think I’ll just leave things alone.

If you’d like to get your own catmint, you can find it here.

Although they’re not *technically* part of my garden yet, these milkweed and marigold seedlings will be planted as soon as they’re big enough. The marigolds are the ones all the way on the right in the front. They came up really fast and furious, in spite of the cool, rainy spring we’re having.

Marigolds are such a great plant to have in the garden. The bees love them, they bloom almost continuously throughout the summer, and lots of pests don’t like marigolds. Win, win in my book (or would that be win, win, win?)

You see, my plant room upstairs is soooo full of seedings that have to be warm and toasty (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and the like), that I had to start all these guys outside.

It’s tough to tell in the picture, but the milkweed is finally starting to come up. I’ve discovered that milkweed is REALLY hard to get to grow from seed. I’m growing swamp, showy and prairie varieties. These are all temperate area milkweeds so they need to be vernalized.

This means that they need a period of cold as seeds in order to sprout. These particular seeds went into a damp paper towel, then into a plastic bag in my refrigerator for 30 days.

After I planted them, though, I almost despaired of them actually coming up. The swamp milkweed came up first, but it took 3 weeks, and the other two varieties just poked their heads up this week, almost a month after planting.

And now, I’ll leave you with two pictures of my gardens. They certainly don’t look as good as they’ll look later in the season, but I can see the potential here, and can’t wait for the warmer weather to come for real and make everything burst into life.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into my garden and you’ll come back often for updates as the seasons progress. Feel free to pin one of the images below so you don’t forget to check back!

As always, smile and have a crazy organic day!

Posts Related to A Spring Garden Tour

• Growing Peas
• Growing Beets
• Favorite Flowering Plants, Part 1
• Favorite Flowering Plants, Part 2
• Resource Library

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Come with me and take a Peek at my Home Garden