heirloom tomato seedlingsI love the arrival of Spring, especially when it’s finally time to start planting vegetables and herbs in the garden. A few weeks ago I showed the barely sprouted tomato seeds that I’d gotten in the mail from Nate of House of Annie. I haven’t managed to keep all the tomatoes alive, but in the photo above you can see that some of them are developing their second set of leaves. Meanwhile, out in the yard there was a huge amount of garden clean-up that had to be done before any of this year’s crops could be planted. I do have the world’s greatest family, and last Saturday my brother Dave and part of his family spent the day at my house helping me get my yard and garden cleaned up, ready for seeds and plants to be put into the ground.

Special thanks to my beautiful sister-in-law Amy, because I know she’s the one who organized the garden and yard clean-up. Above is Amy and her daughter-in-law Jessica cleaning up a flower bed. (Some of you might remember that Amy’s already known on the blog for Amy’s Amazing White Bean Chili.)

Here’s my brother Dave and my nephew Stuart cleaning weeds out of some of my raised garden beds.

Dave also tilled around the beds, and then my nephew Brayden raked up the weeds. I don’t think my garden has ever been this weed-free at the beginning of the year!

You can see there were plenty of weeds (and even some dead leftover plants from last year’s garden) when Dave, Stuart, and Brayden started on it!

And here’s the completely cleaned out garden area, ready for seeds and plants to be put into the ground. I’m planning to plant a few herbs this weekend, as well as seeds for kale, swiss chard, and collards (and possibly a few other things if I get brave and decide to risk it with the weather.) Thank you very much to Dave, Amy, Stuart, Jessica, and Brayden for helping me get such a great start on this year’s garden!

If you want to get an idea of what’s coming for the garden, check the 2009 Garden Updates to see last year’s garden in full production mode.

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