Garden Tours and Projects of 2014

While I love hearing from you guys, some of my very favorite emails are when you share your gardens or gardening projects. I love my garden, but sometimes I really get sick of looking at it. So seeing your garden is a breath of fresh air! I asked you to send in your photographs and stories of your garden, and for yet another year in a row, your gardens have blown me away. Here are some of the coolest ones I’ve seen:

Alison Sends in Pics of Her Very Colorful Harvest:

We were lucky enough to get a glimpse {through gorgeous pictures!} of Alison’s amazing garden in Pennsylvania. Wow! Those tromboncino squash alone made me love her garden! She also has a pretty amazing broccoli house I’m totally jealous of.

Vegetables, Kids, Pigs and Chickens! Oh My:

When Amanda from Southern Virginia send in her photos, I thought for sure they had come straight out of a magazine. I mean seriously, does that photo above not look magical! Her whole backyard does really. They call it their “Half-Acre Home on the Range,” which I love. I also love how involved her kids are in the whole process. Pretty lovely setup they have.
Bob and Sherle From California Share Their Vegetable Garden Photos: Take 2:

Bob and Sherle have one of the most amazing gardens on the planet. This is our second rodeo with them and let me tell you Bob, they continue to impress! Last year Sherle sent in photos of their garden {see them HERE} and shared pictures of her husband standing next to their tomato plants that were over 10 feet tall. Wowza! Their pictures this year were just as spectacular. I hope I can have a garden that will look as good as hers someday.

My Friend Jane From Thy Hand Hath Provided Finally Shows us Her Garden:

My dear friend Jane from Thy Hand Hath Provided {you know, the one with the AWESOME cookbook}, shared her amazing garden pictures after months of me begging. She said something in her email to me that I love and refer back to a lot: “We love trying new projects like Shiitake mushrooms, honeybees, fruit trees, and selling sunflowers, but it’s taken a little while to learn that it is only possible to do many different things IF we lower our standards and live with some weeds and things not looking perfect all the time.” Something I need to always remember.

DIY Pallet Garden Pumpkin Trellis:

KK from Preppy Pink Crocodile sent in a few photos of a pallet garden trellis she built for her community garden allotment last summer and I thought it was so clever! She only has about 200 square feet to work with so she has to plan carefully to take the greatest advantage of space. She’s pretty resourceful, too, getting the pallets for this project for free!

Garden Pictures All The Way From Tasmania, Australia:

Lisa and her husband have been living in Tasmania for 3 years and are enjoying gardening in a new climate. I was enjoying seeing all her gorgeous pictures! Here’s what she had to say about the soil there:

“I must tell you the soil here is a delight… its like you throw seeds at it and it says ‘Here! Food!'”

Beautiful Raised Bed Garden Pictures From Austin, Texas:

When Jana sent in her pictures of her raised bed gardens, I immediately had garden envy! Her garden is just so pretty and orderly and organized; just how I like it. Plus, she’s growing stuff like mad. So far they have have 21 tomatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, broccoli raab, snow peas, lettuce, corn, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, Blue Lake green beans, cilantro, basil and chives. Wow!

Emily From Washington Uses Self-Watering Planters:

Emily had one sunny spot in her yard that gets pretty hot in the afternoon sun. In years past, they had tried using regular pots to grow tomatoes, but with little success. The soil dried out extremely fast, leaving crispy plants by the end of the day. She was determined to find a solution so she scoured the internet and found many self-watering planter DIYs. She showed her husband one of the YouTube videos, and he and a buddy took the basic idea and modified it to work in rain barrels. Pretty brilliant idea if you ask me!

Ann From Eastern Oregon Gives Us a Glimpse of Her Garden:

Ann lives in Eastern Oregon, which is not the green, lush Oregon most people think of when they hear Oregon. In rural Eastern Oregon they have wide open spaces, beautiful rugged mountains and an abundance of wildlife, cattle and farm land. Ann is growing and harvesting like crazy, crops that include: a variety of produce {both wild and domestic}, a bumper crop of huckleberries, bing cherries, sour cherries, apricots and {soon} apples!