The land of opportunity

Good soil is brown gold.  Out of such a dirty mess you can get delicious beets, crispy salad and juicy tomatoes, gorgeous flowers, and heavenly basil.  This spring we have made some improvements to our vegetable garden, some highly visible (a new deer fence with new bamboo poles) and some not (such as added lime [kalk] to prevent blossom end rot of the tomatoes).  So here is a photo update on the current state of affairs in our vegetable garden [or 'köksträdgård', as we say in Swedish, look, all three umlaut vowels in the same word!).

We have young peaches, pears, gooseberries, and red currants and in another month or two (three?) we hope to sink our teeth into these. A new grape arbor (designed and made by PP) with a white Niagara grape and a blue Concord grape is the new home for our two grape plants that were taking over the garden with there vigorous growth.  And this is the time for columbines (Aquilegia, akleja), we have blue, red, white, and yellow ones, three different species.

The chives are flowering too (see above), but the severe weather this winter killed off a lot of the lavender and thyme.  I think they will come back from the root stock, at least some of them. Our experiment with the "deer-proofed" (=unfenced) flower beds planted with mint varieties, sage [salvia], chives [gräslök], lamb's ears [lammöron], lavender [lavendel], and thyme [timjan] has gone far beyond expectations.  The deers refuse to even take a small bite of these herbs, so these flower borders that were grazed down to nothing are now filling in with a real herb garden.  OK, so it isn't the same as tall irises and other gorgeous flowers, but at least it is green and not chewed to death, and it smells amazing.  And the mint is spreading like wildfire, but that is OK, it is surrounded by lawn so it won't get into the vegetable garden. It is truly a wonderful time to get your hands dirty...

Click on images to see larger versions, and click here for more garden photos by Vilseskogen (me).