Growing veggies - still learning

Here's a view of my vegetable garden. I know, it's pretty well covered with crabgrass. But there are some vegetables in there. The beds on the far side of this photo actually produced lettuce and already have bell and hot peppers and tomatoes. As you can see the lettuce has gone to seed. The zucchini and yellow squash in the nearest bed are pretty slow to produce, I think. I'm not sure why. There are a few zucchini already, but no squash at all.

Here is a little bit of a bright spot - collard greens. They are a favorite of mine. These are a little bug-eaten, but still a beautiful and tasty plant. This is growing in the same bed as the lettuce.

This is a view of my tomato plants. They seem to be doing pretty well. They aren't overly productive, but we've already had to give away lots of cherry tomatoes and a couple of slicing tomatoes.

This has to be my favorite plant in the vegetable garden. It's horseradish. I think it's really lovely. I noticed it last year. Then this spring it produced tall stems with many small white flowers that were very, very fragrant. You can see the dead, dried flower stems here among the large shiny basal leaves. I think I'm going to use this plant near the foundation of my house in place of hosta. It is growing here in the shade of an oak tree, so I think it will tolerate a partial sun/shade location.

Next year, I won't have a water garden to build and a muddy front yard to cover with a prairie/meadow garden. I'll just have maintenance there. So maybe my big project will be raised beds for the vegetable garden. Or maybe it will be a grabgrass-free vegetable garden with lots of nice fluffy amended soil :-)