My wild, backyard gardens

My whole yard is practically wild, and my garden plots are just a smidge away from going native. Here's a shot of part of my veg. plot in the way back. What you can see are beans, potatoes, chard, weedy lettuce, and a mound of violets. The violets hide an anthill. I refuse to kill the colony. The lettuce is weedy because whenever I try to weed it, a cat comes along and lays itself down right on the lettuce to 'keep me company'. So the weeding of the lettuce is sporadic. 90% of the weeds in the garden are violets:


Here are my potatoes. I've planted Kennebec and Yukon gold. They aren't 'hilled' because I planted them in trenches and backfilled the trenches as they grew:

The Swiss chard is an heirloom variety called five color silverbeet. There are several colors, green, red, yellow, orange, and I'm not sure what the fifth is:

This is one of my heirloom tomatoes started from seed. It's called Hillbilly Potato Leaf:

My weedy red lettuce:

I have two asparagus plants coming up. I forget the variety, but it's the one that's all male:

In a sunny corner by the house, I have lavender (Hidcote, Munstead, and Provence), garlic, and yarrow all cozied up together:

The largest plant right now in my medicinal herb garden is my elecampane. I love the undersides of the large leaves, they're soft and textured:

Here they are from above. these are second-year plants. I'll harvest their roots in the fall:

These happy violas sit on our patio table. They were a gift from a neighbor:

Here's to half-wild gardens, always almost native!