My first real vegetable garden

So I've planted my first REAL garden!! I did, however, cave and purchase a garden bed kit, which I put together easily. I used a sort of "lasagna" style gardening method. As you can see in the following pictures, I've layered the garden bed with wet newspaper, peat moss, old dead leaves, cow manure, and soil.

(a view of the empty bed with my composter, from the back patio)

This is what I direct sowed from seed into my garden bed: carrots, kale, mizuna, spinach, and lettuce. Only 2 lettuce seedlings ever emerged and a bird ate most of one, so I don't have much in there. The mizuna is doing awesome, and so are the carrots. The kale is doing pretty well, I think. A lot of the lettuce seeds didn't germinate, because I think maybe I sowed them too deep. I've made new plantings of those and they've already emerged. 

Then I bought some tomato plants (Jet Star, Green Zebra, San Marzano, and Celebrity), broccoli, and pepper plants and transplanted those into the garden bed. I also bought some green and yellow squashes, both are in pots (no room in my garden bed). 

 (summer squash)

 (Celebrity tomato and the chives my mom gave me)

 (the whole garden bed, with bird netting)

 (closeup of my kale!!)

 (closeup of my mizuna)

 (transplanted broccoli on left and transplanted peppers on right)

(my carrots, purple and orange ones)

(super closeup of my Russian Kale!)

So how does it look?? Hopefully the lettuce will really fill in the left side of the bed, in front of the tomatoes. I've been taking the bird netting off every other day to pick the weeds out, or should I say, the maple seedlings. Yes, the maple seeds have blown everywhere! They are all over my garden and they are sprouting like wildfire, especially with all the rain we've had. 

Ok, now where's my harvest??? Hahahaha......I may pick off some of the Mizuna leaves soon, for some salads. I think our apple trees (Empire and Liberty) have some sort of Cedar Apple Rust disease.....raised yellow spots all over the leaves. The apples are growing really nicely...so hopefully they will be ok. Anyone know about apple trees?

What are you growing in YOUR garden?

Eat smart,

T.