Our Beautiful Kitchen Garden Beginnings | 2021 Update

Going on evening walks in our kitchen garden has been such a beautiful and relaxing experience. I’ve enjoyed it so much I decided I had to take you on an evening walk with me!

Before we begin I want to be clear: This is a beautiful garden, BUT it’s not complete.

When I look out at the garden I see such a grand transformation.

It really is wild how much this garden has changed in such a short time.

But, things like gardens take TIME.

It’s not just a matter of planting all the plants and building all the things. It’s a matter of TIME.

Maybe I’m the only one who struggles with this, but being patient and waiting for it to look the way I envision it is so difficult.

For this post, I’ve decided to share with you all the changes that have happened this year and then share a little bit of what I’m planning for next year.

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Last Years Garden

Our Fruit Bearing Plants

Our new additions to the garden in the fruit family are 2 lemonade blueberry bushes and three honeyberry bushes.

We have tested both of these berries and LOVE them!

The lemonade blueberries are actually pink/red when they get ripe, and my favorite part about them is that they are sourer than regular blueberries!

We have only had 2 honeyberries and the truth is, I remember that I like them, but to describe it, I couldn’t.

What they say about them is they are a cross between a blueberry and black raspberry.

Basically, if you like berries you’ll like these haha!

In sad news, these poor babies were on death’s door. We’re really babying them.

Do you see the big black shade cloth behind the chicken coop?

These berries like a little shade generally, which they will get behind the chicken coop, but because the new split rail fence took longer than we expected, these bushes got FRIED from the sun while they waited to be planted.

We wanted to wait until the fence was in before we planted them so we didn’t accidentally injure them with the auger.

The good news is since we got them transplanted they have all had new growth!

Our Vegetable Beds

Beets

Do you know any kid that LOVED beets?

Yeah, I didn’t either. Not until my husband insisted we plant a row of beets 2 years ago and I fed them to my kids haha!

Seriously, after I harvest them all I do is boil them in water and the girls devour them!

I have to put limits on their beet consumption.

Pumpkin, Beans, and Zucchini

This is my favorite vegetable garden bed in our kitchen garden.

The girls LOVE the beans and it’s so fun watching them run over to this garden bed to see if the beans have started growing yet.

Last year the girls would come to the bean bed, pick the beans, and eat them immediately!

No washing. No cooking. no seasoning.

We’ve since told them they need to at least wash them since we are dealing with so many pests!

The pumpkins!

Let’s pause quickly to notice the lightning bug.

He started glowing right as I snapped this picture.

Do you have more lightning bugs this year than last year?

We find them all day long!

I actually found one in my refrigerator…poor guy! He must have been on a vegetable I brought in and I didn’t get him off.

Whoops!

Okay, back to the pumpkins. We bought these seeds to grow these pumpkins for my sister-in-law’s wedding a couple of years ago.

They were so productive and the perfect size for Fall decorations I decided to grow them again.

They are a bush variety and in this little garden, a large vine is just very difficult. Although, I’ve seen that some people built tall arbors for their vine plants.

This year I was sad to not plant any spaghetti squash, acorn squash, and butternut squash in our kitchen garden. So I might try an arbor next year!

Nasturtium, Cabbage, Broccoli, and Cauliflower

These garden beds are a mixture of things for us and things for the chickens.

We are growing the cabbage for the chickens and the rest for us!

It’s not that we don’t like cabbage, but rather it’s that our chicks LOVE cabbage!

These girls are the cabbage-loving chicks. If you wanna see them when they were babies check out this post HERE.

It’s funny, as they have grown they have also grown into their own personalities.

My favorite chicken from little chicks isn’t my favorite chicken anymore haha!

Cucumbers

Right now our cucumbers are just itty bitty! But they are loaded with them! We counted on one vine alone it had over 9 cucumbers!

Also, when I planted these cucumbers I planted 4-5 seeds per mound.

You do this because not all of the seeds will sprout.

Then once they sprout you are supposed to thin them. Select the strongest vines and keep them and then remove the weakest.

But for me, I just couldn’t kill the unneeded vines. I thought I would want to have them for more produce.

No! Absolutely not!

Since my husband went out and helped me murder some of those cucumbers, the remaining cucumber vines have absolutely EXPLODED!!

So, if you’re like me, get a friend who doesn’t think plants have feelings. Then have them help you thin your plants to make them be stronger and more productive haha!

Our Herb Garden

I had such BIG plans to build a herb garden bed this year. But as life does, it happened differently than I planned.

So the herbs that I have are lavender in my new rose garden, and basil with our tomatoes and peppers, and then a pot of rosemary, basil, and oregano.

Our Flowers

I actually was surprised by some fun flowers this year!

My neighbor walks down the street every day. Rain. Shine. Snow. It doesn’t matter.

Every day I can count on seeing her.

Turns out she is quite the gardener herself!! She does herbs and flowers mostly.

But seeing me out in the garden as much as I am she decided to walk over and ask if I wanted some of her daisies!!

I didn’t have any plans for Shasta daisies in our kitchen garden, but when she offered I knew I had to say yes!

The transplant was hard on a few of them, hence the bent-over blooms, but I figure as long as they live next year they will come up happy and straight!

I planted them toward the back of the bed and am trying to plan what flower to plant in the front. I want to add a little color to this flower bed.

Maybe something blue or purple?

Next up is the new rose garden!

They are still just baby plants, but this is what I was talking about earlier.

The roses will eventually be 3’x4′ and the lavender will be 12″x24″.

So today they are small and quite insignificant.

But can you see the potential?

The rose bushes are just barely as tall at the bottom rail in the new fence. But can you envision them as tall at the top rail? And then wide enough to create a hedge of roses in this corner?

Just thinking about it makes my heart explode with the wonder that lives in the waiting!!

What’s to Come

Speaking of roses and imagining things…

Do you see the front of the chicken coop?

I’m planning on adding another raised flower bed over there. In it, I’m going to plant a climbing rose with more English lavender.

Again, I can just see beautiful roses climbing up over the top of the window and spilling over toward the door.

Oh, my word!!! Just thinking about it brings me so much joy.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but the section of fence you see in the above picture has a 5′ wide opening just to the right of where this picture ends.

In that opening, we are planning on buying or building an arbor to add to our kitchen garden. Then we want to plant some clematis to climb over it.

In my dreams, the border of this little piece of earth is surrounded by flowers.

I have plans to split and move some of my peony bushes over here, along with some of our iris.

The final plan for next year is to plant some more shrubs in the back corner beside the chicken coop. It’s completely empty right now, but I can see some incrediball hydrangea or Korean spice viburnum growing there.

I’m still trying to decide. But the good news is, I have plenty of TIME to think is over!

Please Pin!

If you’ve missed any of my other garden posts and want to see more of the process and how we got where we are today check out all the phases here!

The Planning Phase
Starting Seedlings Indoors
Managing Common Garden Pests
Pruning Hydrangea

Thanks so much for walking in our kitchen garden with me!

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Have a great week! XoXo

Open Your Doors,
Aliya