Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to
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Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary! (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)
All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds. They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant. The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.
Still, we persist, year after year. Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.
So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress. I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th). These are by no means all of our garden beds. Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).
A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.
Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:
The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:
The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.
Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:
The cabbages are doing beautifully...
In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:
...but the broccoli is just getting started:
One day soon, we'll get some peas:
More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:
The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:
as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:
Our strawberries are pretty much done:
But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:
and sweet potatoes:
Regular potatoes:
Lima beans:
Peppers:
Tomatoes:
And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:
Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet). Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:
This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes. Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.
We're actually low on eggs right now. The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying. *&^% freeloaders. We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones. Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer. I never knew he was quite so sentimental.
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams
Dh made potato salad last night: our potatoes, our eggs, our celery, and our dill. If we weren't so lazy, it'd be our mayo as well. Our plan is to make our own pickle relish this year. 
Does anyone have a good pickle relish recipe to share with us? :)
They're in the main fenced garden. In the foreground, you can see the north-side fenced garden where spinach, edible pod peas, and potatoes are growing.
You can see, behind the wheat, our greenhouse, one of the chicken tractors that our friends JGTH left for us when they moved back to the West Coast, as well as our shed (and the attached fowl hut).
A different experiment that dh is trying this year is using grass clippings as mulch. He found and bought a nice clippings catcher for his Toro mower from someone on eBay, and it's probably already paid for itself in making our grass clippings useful.
and garlic...
and strawberries...
Red Russian Kale was a veggie that ds#2 picked for growing back in 2006, and it's self-seeded itself ever since. Love it when that happens!
Lastly, on our tour today, we'll take a peek inside the greenhouse. To the left, you can see the cilantro flowering and going to seed with broccoli plants among them. In the back, we have onions growing in front of eggplants. And to the right is where dh was starting up corn and edamame - which is another experiment. Usually dh puts them right into the ground, but because we've had such a problem with voles eating the seeds, dh decided to sprout them first, then transplant them.
This last photo is a close-up of the onions and eggplants:"
Hope you've enjoyed this look at our garden. I've not shown you the stuff in the south garden, which includes carrots, choi sum, bok choi, raspberries, squashes, cucumbers, and more onions.