Though being swift can help. We’re nine months into our new gardens now, and we’ve worked hard to get them into production. We replanted and recreated our Grocery Row Gardens, planted a good herb garden, planted probably 50 trees in the yard, plus got a chicken coop and pig pen created – as well as setting up a milking area and turning a horse pasture into a cow pasture.

This year’s garden yields, as of June 11th:

496lbs of produce so far, and 1,423 eggs.

No, it doesn’t say “lasagna” at the bottom – that’s the notation for “Red La Soda” potatoes.

Suffice it to say that the Grocery Row Gardens are doing much better here than at The Barren Sand Pit of Death where they used to be planted. Soil makes a big difference.

We also planted a good herb garden here, for the first time in a long time.

It’s starting to fill in. We’re going to reclaim some of the weedy area beside it and extend the beds a bit, as we have more herbs we want to cultivate.

Along with herbs, we’ve put a few flowers in these beds. Including dahlias:

A couple of roses, of which one is currently in bloom:

And this little daisy, which I dug from an empty lot in downtown Pensacola:

We also have some of the herbs themselves in bloom right now, including catnip:

Yarrow:

Dill:

And lavender:

Here’s a shot from above, showing a little of the herb garden and the complete Grocery Row Gardens:

That bare patch after the herb garden area is soon to be planted with a sun hemp cover crop. We just pulled out the potatoes and re-tilled the area to suppress weeds. If we don’t plant it fast, the weeds will be right back.

We pushed hard to get our gardens running again, and we’re starting to reap the benefits. I think we’ll easily pass 1,000lbs of produce this year – and it should get better in subsequent years, as the soil improves and the perennials come into production.

In other news, we’re working on restocking the nursery today. If all goes well, we’ll have another plant sale this coming Saturday.

Have a great Monday.