It's hot and humid in North Carolina now and I'm continuing to work on my garden. Here's a tour! First my ornamental garden.

New this year is the semi-circular flower bed I put in at the corner of our patio. The flowering plants here are just for fun and beauty. Need to add a layer of mulch.

I planted a passionflower vine in a plastic barrel at the other corner of the patio with a large trellis to climb up. It has grown at a moderate pace and occasionally flowers, although there finally seems to be a lot of buds on it now. It might not be getting enough sun.

I planted two blueberry bushes in wooden barrels. Two different rabbiteye blueberry varieties so they can cross-pollinate. The one on the right is flopping over and had berries starting to grow on it when I bought it. I harvested a handful the other day. 

My elephant ear bulb is doing really well. It likes lots of water so I didn't drill a hole in the bottom of this plastic barrel planter. The water doesn't drain and the elephant ear seems to love it.

I planted this small Stepable plant, a variegated pennywort, and it loves the spot between the air conditioning units. This is probably my most successful plant! It can handle moderate foot traffic, so it shouldn't get ruined when they service the air conditioning.

Now for my vegetable garden. This year we put in two raised bed planters in the backyard. The raised beds are from Frame It All and were fairly easy to put together. Once we chose the location, Mike trimmed the grass really low and I laid down layers of newspaper to help prevent the grass from growing up into the beds. I also put a thin layer of weed barrier paper that I got online. Then, we set up the beds on top. Ordered dirt to be delivered to the house in "Super Sacks" and used a wheelbarrow to move the dirt around to the back and fill the beds. It took quite a few loads. Then, I figured out how to set up a drip irrigation system for the beds and bought a timer to automate watering. It was a long, slow, tedious process, but now that it is done, I have room to grow lots of veggies in good, quality dirt. The only maintenance required is putting some fresh compost once a year and pulling out the occasional weed. 

The bed on the left, creatively named "A," has 9 asparagus plants, several strawberry plants, a small lavender plant, rosemary, three tomato plants (2 regular size tomatoes and one cherry tomato), pepper plants, and seemingly giant marigolds in the front corner.

The bed on the right, named "B," has two cantaloupes, corn, a sunflower, 5 potato plants, carrots, and radishes. I also planted some cabbage seeds this week and I'm planning to add a few broccoli plants when the weather gets a bit cooler.

Here's a closer look at the 5 potato plants. I "hilled them up" by piling extra dirt around them. I was not expecting them to grow so tall.

It seemed to take a long time to get the vegetable seeds to sprout and pop through the soil, but now they are growing well for the most part. I need to get up my animal barrier soon so the bunnies don't eat everything...