It's been a very long time since I've posted a garden update. Long-time followers of this blog might think that we don't do gardening anymore, since I don't write about it, either here or on social media. Truth be told, though, having a garden is such a way of life that I don't think that much about it— and when I'm actually out in the yard, I always forget to take pictures!
After letting the yard go completely fallow last year (since we had a tiny infant to care for), this year we've been working more deliberately in the garden. I still didn't plant many veggie crops, but have been working on adding more herbs and flowers.
Today I finally got out and took some photos… although you've got to keep in mind that we've been on vacation and haven't weeded at all in over two weeks. Also, I took these photos right before harvesting a bunch of garlic. Still, I thought it would be cool to document. Here is a tour of what our yard looks like nowadays!
FRONT YARD:
This is a general view of the north side of the front yard, as seen from the street. In the first photo you can see American hazelnut, garlic, flowers my friend gave me (the feathery plants at the bottom— I need to remember what they're called), a Chicago hardy fig, and elderberry in the background. (There are also tomatoes planted in the middle but you can't see them because I haven't staked them yet.) I also forgot to take a picture of my herb corner in the far upper right corner of this section, which has oregano, thyme, parsley, dill, lavender, and kale.
Here's the south side of the front yard: yarrow, tons of garlic, basil, swamp white oak, and prairie blazing star.
The hazelnuts are such gorgeous shrubs! We got these several years ago as little sticks from the Department of Conservation at an Earth Day Festival. They grow very vigorously and we cut them back a lot every year. They bear a lot of nuts, too, but unfortunately the squirrels always get to them first. Their leaves are beautiful in the fall.
Here's a different view of the front yard from the sidewalk in the middle, featuring evening primrose, daisies, fig, and day lilies.
We love our Chicago hardy fig! You can see the fruits just starting to form along the stem near the bottom of this photo, and we get a lot of ripe fruit in fall before the first frost. The shrub dies back to the ground every year, then grows again from the roots, which is pretty cool to watch.
Salvia that my friend just gave me, with woodland tobacco behind it. I'm working to establish a perennial flower border along the front of our yard.
Closer to the house, I have a strawberry bed where I'm also growing collards and kale. The collards especially have grown huge!
Beside the strawberry bed is an elderberry, just going through the last of the flowers and starting to set fruit.
On the south side of the yard, I planted a bunch of basil just a couple days before leaving town. I'm so happy with how well it's grown even while being neglected! Just need to weed and mulch now.
Planted a bunch of sage this year too and it's doing great.
More daisies! My mom gave me a bunch last year that I threw in random places all over the yard, so it's been fun to see them come up.
The garlic has put out its "seeds," tiny cloves that we can plant again. I actually haven't planted garlic deliberately in like seven years; it just keeps self-sowing!
This rain barrel is so great to have: the gravity-fed hose is a wonderful way to water new plant starts! I'm hoping to set up another barrel on the corner of the house, and we have one in the back, too. You can also see the Virginia creeper vines that we've been encouraging to grow on the side of our house for the past few years: they attach to the siding with suckers (bad for the paint but doesn't affect structural integrity) and provide a bit of shade from the hot southern sun. They grew so thickly this year that some house sparrows built a nest in them!
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A few years ago we decided to plant a swamp white oak, because oaks support a larger number of species than any other plant in North America. It's been a slow start, but this year it's really taken off! The birds perch on its twigs now. :)
A friend gave me yarrow a few years back and it grows beautifully. I like to cut it for bouquets, and the insects love it!
The prairie blazing star is such a cool native plant— it reminds me of something Dr. Seuss would draw. I'm really excited to see it in bloom! Other natives are planted around it: a prairie coreopsis hanging on for dear life, and some purple coneflowers. (I need to weed out that mimosa.)
SIDE YARD:
In front of the hackberry and tree of heaven (unwanted) and the Virginia creeper and stinging nettle (wanted— especially the nettle, it's so tasty!) is the main crop growing in our side yard: goldenrod. Several years ago I grabbed some seeds from goldenrod along the nearby walking path and threw them onto the rocky side yard, not expecting much. They grew into six-foot-tall plants with huge flower clusters that all sorts of animals absolutely love! (If you're worried that you're allergic to goldenrod, you probably aren't— the pollen is heavy and doesn't get carried by wind. They bloom the same time as ragweed, which has flowers that are difficult to notice, so a lot of people think the culprit is goldenrod when it's actually ragweed.)
BACK YARD:
Continuing along the property line, you can see these gorgeous elderberries. We cut them back to a few bare branches every year, and they put out several feet of growth to make up for it. Once the berries are ripe, I'll harvest them and make them into juice (for brewing) and/or syrup (for smoothies). Also note the beans growing in the lower right— they are thicket beans, a native perennial bean that self-sow freely (and are very tasty!).
At the very back corner of our backyard is the compost pile— it definitely needs some more brown material to bulk it up, so we're waiting on autumn leaves (which we take from neighbors' curbs when they set out their yard waste) for that. There's also a volunteer squash here, but it's growing in the shade so I doubt it'll set fruit.
Looking into the yard from the compost pile, you can see this thick forest of sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes), a native perennial sunflower with edible tubers. They spread like crazy, but the bugs and birds love them! You can also see the overhanging branches of our Illinois Everbearing Mulberry tree. It set amazing fruit for the first few years we had it, then got a fungal infection and now all the fruits are hard and inedible. It provides nice shade, and the birds will still eat the fruit, but we're considering cutting it down in order to free up more space for other things.
From the opposite corner of the yard looking toward the compost pile, you can see some of our trees: tart cherry, European hazelnut, mulberry, and a couple overhanging leaves of our nectarine. The only one that fruits consistently of these is the tart cherry, but we love having the shade, especially on summer days like this! I made a little patio for myself with some mulch and a lawn chair my neighbor was throwing away. Other plants you can see in this photo are comfrey, false indigo (shading an ever-growing garden of native spring ephemerals), and lovage.
Our apple tree is next to the nectarine, and it's setting fruit this year!
It took our lemon balm a few years to take off, but it's looking good this year. I'll harvest some soon to dry for tea. We also have some mint growing around, but I have managed to completely kill our peppermint and mostly kill our chocolate mint (how??).
We have a nice little crop of purple coneflower in back, which the bees absolutely love. They are twined with groundnut, a native vine with delicious tubers. Nearby these plants we have irises (got at a neighborhood plant swap), the last vestiges of the chocolate mint, and an old bathtub-turned-planter-bed full of spring greens, moringa, and a sungold cherry tomato plant.
Bonus: Here's the garlic harvest I did after taking these photos!
Do you have any questions about the garden?
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