Garden in July

The garden is a bit behind this year. We've had much more rain and cold weather than the typical spring and therefore the growth has been slow and we couldn't plant as early as we would have liked.

Here's what it looks like now:

The south end of the garden gets a slight amount of shade throughout the day due to the tall trees that border the creek/yard to the south. This allows us to grow snap peas all summer long even when the temperatures are 80 and above. The lettuce and spinach are next to the peas, and will benefit of some shade as the peas fill in. the cabbages take up the whole next row and I'm planning on making another batch of sauerkraut this fall. Turnips, parsnips and beets are in sections of the nearest row in the picture.

Carrots on the right fill half a row. We often stagger our plantings, so today I hope to seed the other half of the row with the remainder of the carrots. The onions (middle) are Walla Walla Sweets and down the middle of that row I have transplanted my dill which I will need for pickling. On the left are our peppers. We have several varieties of sweet bell peppers and a couple jalapenos to use in salsa and pickling.

We only put in two rows of blue lake pole beans this year. They all look strong so I think it will be enough to pickle, can, freeze and eat fresh! The corn is planted in blocks on the left behind the beans. We have two varieties currently and will plant the middle section today with the rest of the corn.

We added a new planter this year up against the garage. The expectation is that the heat reflected off the south face of the garage and from the patio will help the tomatoes produce and ripen before we get too much fall rain or frost. We're also experimenting with cantaloupe in the from of the tomatoes to cascade over the south edge and really get some good heat. The problem, of course, is that we couldn't get things in ground or raised planter/bed very early this year, so much will depend largely on when the first rains of fall arrive.

(the house in the background is the neighbor's house - ours looks like it but is a 90 degree turn to the left of the current picture)
These are the raised beds we put in last spring. At this end of the right hand bed we have hubbard squash, which I steam and freeze for pumpkin pies or pumpkin cake. The color is brighter than pumpkin and I prefer the flavor, though most people never notice the difference once cooked. The rest of this bed has 6 hills of pickling cucumbers, 1 hill of lemon cukes and 1 hill of slicing cukes.
The bed on the left has butternut squash in the near end for winter eating. There are 3 hills of yellow crookneck squash and 3 hills of zucchini. We love the fresh summer squash in scrambled eggs, in stir-fry's and steamed. I also shred and freeze some zucchini for winter baking.
The tall bed on the far left of this picture used to have all my herbs in it (chives, rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano and lemon balm). Currently I am in the process of moving all my perennial herbs to an in-ground bed. I have strawberry plants all around the outside edge of this planter with basil, parsley and cilantro in the middle. We love our pesto around here, and it freezes nicely so we try and make a ton!

Well, that's the long of it!
I'll leave you with a few pictures of what the garden looked like when we were preparing it for planting this spring.