Spring is in full motion with wild flowers and ample plant growth. The green house herbs and veggies have been making progress, outside of the green house too.
Greenhouse Herbs
The green house has been easy to manage, it's warm enough at night to leave the ventilation screened windows open all the time. The green house still provides protection from strong winds, heavy rains, cold snaps, pests, and critters. It's clam and relaxing in the green house.
Left to right, top row then bottom, we have chamomile, sweet marjoram, sage, oregano, basil, dill, thyme, lemon balm, and chives. Half of the basil and thyme were split off to smaller containers, some of the dill, thyme, chamomile, lemon balm, and lemon mint was harvested.
I'm a little disappointed with the chives sprouting, I was generous with the seeds and used a whole pack. Maybe the seeds were old, but I was expecting it to be more filled in, I could re-seed.
Only a handful of the oregano plants ended up sprouting, but their leaves have grown large enough to fill half the container - a perennial herb, these oregano plants will last for many years.
Closely related to the oregano plant, the fragrant sweet marjoram perennial is growing buds and preparing to bloom.
 Lemon Mint |  Lemon Balm |
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The perennial herbs Lemon Mint and Lemon Balm have some easy to confuse names and nicknames, Lemon Mint and Lemon Balm are both also known as 'bee balm'. They are both part of the mint family, but you can see from the pictures above that the Lemon Balm has the more classic mint leaf look.
I'm not sure what these sprouts are, but I have obviously planted them, I'll have to wait a few weeks to figure it out. Possibly climbing strawberries, but I'm not sure.
The mini evergreen Rosemary perennial seedlings are making their slow growth strides and looking healthy. I'll have to separate some of these to their own containers before they get too large.
Chamomile flower harvest
The annual Chamomile flowers keep filling in, their spring flowers were quick to appear.
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I've harvested the Chamomile flowers twice so far, the keep growing back. I let the flower dry for a couple weeks before storing them in tea tin, Chamomile makes a relaxing herbal tea.
Greenhouse Veggies
The vegetables have been cozy in the green house, they avoided the brunt of a wind storm last night.
I have some string trellises strung for the peas to climb up - sooner than later they will start to bloom and grow peas.
The sunflower plants are looking hardy, I'm curious to see how big they will get growing out of repurposed large plastic olive jars.
The potato plants continue to grow vigorously larger, the leaves have a healthy deep green look to them.
The strawberry seedlings have tripled in size, strawberry plants are usually early bloomers.
The corn plant has large dark leaves, it reminds me of a grass plant that has been super sized, even the corn cobs are similar in shape to a wheat seed head. Unfortunately corn lacks particular amino acids for it to be considered a hardy grain, it's been side dished to a sweet vegetable.
 Onion |  Beets |
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Onions, beets, and gourd seedlings have been popping up in the cloth bag planters.
The tomato plants keeps climbing rungs of the wire trellis, tomato plants usually start to bloom early too, the green house worked well for getting an early start on the garden.
Garden Boxes and Compost Bin
In the back yard I also have garden boxes and a compost bin that I built last summer. I've slowly been filling the garden boxes with soil and composted material - at the end of the grow season, all the soil from the green house containers will go in the garden boxes.
The garden boxes should be half full of soil by next spring, I'll most likely put a hoop row cover on it - to make it like a mini-green house, for an early start next year.
 Squash Trellis |  Squash Bloom |
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There are squash plants in the box near the compost bin, with a string Trellis for them to climb. We had pumpkins in that spot last year and we're surprised to find a bonus pumpkin that had hung down and grown in the compost bin.
Lawn clippings, pet bunny droppings, and plain correlated cardboard goes into the compost bin. Bunny droppings are actually immediately useable for the garden, but I mix them in with the compost first.
The wild roses are in full bloom, the bees and the hummingbirds enjoy them. The fruit of the wild rose, rosehips can be collected in the fall - they can be turned into a vitamin C rich jelly.
Rose petals can be collected and dried for herbal teas, potpourri, or rose water.
One of the garden boxes has a rouge wild rose runner growing up. Below are green onions and a tomato seedling.
Below is a thyme perennial from last summer in bloom.
 Thyme Herb |  Thyme Bloom |
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Below is one of the hummingbird feeders we had up before the flowers started to appear - there are a lot of hummingbirds in this area, some have a squeaky wing sound to them. There are a bounty of flowers for them to pick from, now that spring is in full swing.
