We like growing a vegetable garden, even if it is only a small one in the backyard. Eventually, we will have a much larger garden when we retire to a large plot of land. We plan to have a large veggie garden, an herb garden, a flower garden, and a small orchard. But for right now, all we have room for is a small veggie garden in the backyard.

We have a grape plant that survived when all of the others didn’t make it. Not sure if it is the original rootstock or the graft. The grapes are very sweet, but they have lots of seeds. It makes excellent jelly. Here is the grape plant in its new location:

We use hog panels as a very sturdy support structure for growing climbing plants such as grapes, cucumbers, squash, and loofahs. Loofahs are great when they are allowed to dry out on the vine, then the skin is removed. The fibrous center of the loofah makes a great dish scrubber. Here are more ways to use loofahs.

Walking further in the back yard, here are some more plants, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and cabbages. The tomatoes were started from clippings. The photos show tomatoes, cabbages, zucchini, cucumbers, and peppers in our back yard.

We grow a small garden to keep our gardening skills up to date and it’s nice to have fresh veggies to cook with in the summer. Last year Barry grew some large watermelons. They were very sweet and good. We joked that our husky peeing on the watermelon plants was just what they needed.