It’s that exciting time of year when we start to see little plants popping up in our garden. Want to see how my garden grows? Here, I’ll show you my garden plot(s), then I hope you’ll tell me about your garden if you’re growing one this year too!

We’ve already enjoyed lots of spinach and green leaf lettuce. See the jungle of spinach behind the lettuce? It looks terrible – but we’ve actually let it go on purpose. It will re-seed all by itself this way, then give us another crop in the fall. Then, it will come up again on its own next spring. It’s a pretty nice system. (We do the same with the green leaf lettuce.)

It doesn’t seem like much to look at yet, but we have several rows of green beans. We see some gaps in there that tell us we’ll need to replant a few.

This year, we’re trying okra again. It takes a lot of heat and sun for okra to grow well, so it doesn’t always work here in Nebraska. Here’s hoping!

Here’s a close-up of one okra plant:

Notice how we have plastic buckets and such around many of our plants? (And by we I mean Matt and the boys. I can take no credit for all this work!)  The protection around our plants is an effort to keep the bunnies from getting to them. Those “cute wittle wabbits” are sooooo stinkin’ not cute when they nibble and kill our plants. ;)

Matt uses our raised garden bed area for a variety of sweet peppers. These are his babies. :)

Here’s a sweet pepper close-up. Surely the rabbits won’t be able to climb up the slippery tin surrounding the plants!

Our back yard “L” shaped garden plot has all of our tomato plants this year. If we get a good crop, I’ll be able to make a year’s supply of tomato sauce, tomato soup, and some salsa.

Somewhere in one of those plots, we also have a couple hills of spaghetti squash planted. We never plant cucumbers, summer squash, or zucchini because everyone around here always has plenty to share!

So how about you? Do you have a garden this year? If so, what are you growing? And what else would you like to share about this Gratituesday? What are you thankful for?