How does your garden grow?

I won't lie.  I wasted a lot of time trying to work my name into the Mary Mary, Quite Contrary rhyme before I gave up and accepted that nothing rhymes with April.  : )  Moving on...

Over the winter, my friend L and I spent a lot of time talking about gardens...what we wanted to plant, how much we could plant, how much money we would save if we had a big garden.  After surveying my yard, we decided to have a community garden of sorts in her backyard which gets full sun.  I have lots of trees...it made sense in the dead of winter.

We started lots of seeds in cups (and failed miserably...only about 7 things lived), but we've been planting seeds and plants out in the garden and the last few weeks have brought much promise!  Here's what the garden looked like as of Friday the 13th.

The gallon jugs on the left hold water L has collected during our recent torrential rain storms (and keep her toddlers from trampling the potato plants!)  She's hoping to use the water in the jugs throughout the summer months.  The mass of green in the middle is volunteer pumpkin vine from her compost pile last fall.  The little green spots around the edges of the garden are tomato plants.  L and her husband have been constructing trellises out of whatever we've been able to find...PVC pipes, wood stakes, old fencing, etc.  The shorter wooden stakes throughout the garden mark different quadrants and we have a folder with drawings of what we've planted in each area, the date we planted, the variety and any notes on how it's doing.

L's hubby is a handy guy and he built this raised bed with the help of their teenage son.  The potatoes in the far right end of the bed are doing awesome!  The middle section houses strawberry plants and the last section will house herbs, as soon as one of us get to the garden center or the ones she started from seed inside start to grow.  (There's more milk cartons filled with water.  L also has a couple of makeshift rain barrels around the yard.)

We're really excited to see how all of our experimentation turns out this year...and newly invigorated since we were able to pick our first 4 radishes on Friday!  I'm also putting in a garden at my house to see how it does...this year is all about experimenting to see what works!  I hope you'll stick around for this adventure in dirt!  : )