It’s the beginning of June and despite a rocky start, our backyard garden is starting to make encouraging progress.  We started our garden last summer by digging up a 15 x 40 area of grass in the backyard.  This year we expanded the garden by about 100 sq ft (taking over more lawn) and added raspberry, blackberry and blueberry bushes, as well as two apple trees.

Here’s how my garden measures up as of June 3rd, 2009:

• Tomatoes:  20 plants, 12″-24″.
• Potatoes: 4 plants (20+ have failed to sprout from the soil), 4″-15″.
• Carrots: dozens, 6″-12″.
• Parsnips: 10 plants, 10″-12″.
• Garlic: 1 dozen, 26″+
• Hot Peppers: 6 plants, 2″-4″.  Eek.
• Broccoli: 6 plants, 12″-16″.
• Cabbage: 2 plants, 2″ and dying I think.
• Lettuce: 1 dozen, 4″-8″.  Harvested daily.
• Spinach: 6 plants, 6″-12″.  Harvested daily.
• Raspberry and Blackberry: 9 plants, 10″-18″, some have failed to bud.
• Blueberry: 8 plants, 10″-18″.  Heavy foliage.
• Apples: 2 trees each averaging 2-3 dozen young .5″-1″ fruits.

I’d love to hear from others with backyard garden – how does your garden measure up so far and what’s going right and what’s going wrong?

I’m taking photos to track the progress of our garden and tagging them grow52556 on Flickr.  Anyone in Fairfield wishing to share and pool their gardening photos together should upload them to Flickr (free) and tag them grow52556.  They will automatically get added to the slideshow and then shared on any blog or social network site.  It’s a great way to easily create a shared photo blog about gardening in Fairfield (great for Fairfield Iowa search rank on the web).