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Friday, August 20, 2010

My garden

Two years ago, the back of our yard was a gravel parking area. It was the best place for a garden--full sun, no trees nearby to shade it--but the gravel meant I had to build up with raised beds, rather than dig down into the soil. I got a huge pile of free wood chips from a tree removal company, so those are spread as mulch between the raised beds. Here's what my garden looks like today:
Top beds: 1) beets and some mystery squash/melons, 2) herbs
Middle beds: 1) carrots, 2) tomatoes (mostly Cherokee Purple), shallots, garlic
Bottom bed in the retaining wall: raspberries & strawberries
Top beds (notice the last few fence panels that need to go up): 1) strawberries 2) compost pile/brown matter/compost tumbler
Middle beds: 1) Masai variety bush beans 2) edamame & more bush beans
Bed alongside the garage: blackberries, asparagus, and (harvested) onion patch
Fruit bed that wraps around the swingset: 2 honeyberries, 3 red currants, 3 gooseberries, 3 juneberries.
You can see my shadow--I'm standing on the top of the play house to take the picture.
We also have a 4x10 bed right outside our kitchen door, with tomatoes, potatoes, & herbs.
And lots of mystery melons and squashes in our compost pile & in the jungle behind our garage. I spotted an acorn squash plant but the rest I don't recognize.

Things have been growing vigorously this season, but it seems I've harvested surprisingly little. Other gardener friends of my have made the same remark. My onions & beets were disappointingly small. My carrots, on the other hand, are long and straight and lovely. The beans & herbs have done well, while tomatoes and potatoes got the blight again. I saved most of the tomato plants with a copper spray, but the potatoes finally gave up the ghost. I need to harvest several of the beds and plant beets, kale, salad greens, spinach, and whatever else will grow quickly enough for a fall harvest.
This last picture is a homage to Craiglist--$150 for the whole swingset, including delivery! There's an I-beam for a tire swing on the other side of the playhouse.

5 comments:

  1. Wow, gorgeous garden! I love it.

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  2. I was curious about that swingset! Everything looks absolutely wonderful. Enjoy the harvest!

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  3. My garden's been weird this year too. We had some strange weather early in the year when the garden should have been developing, so I think that's it. Everyone in my area is having the same issues. Things are growing but the actual harvest is not nearly as plentiful or as robust as usual.

    That and the fact that a stupid gopher got a whole bunch of my carrots! Grrrr!

    Do you can, Rixa?

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  4. you mentioned "blight again" so i thought i'd encourage you to read up on crop rotation- switching up which beds the crops are in so the pests that gained a foothold last season aren't anywhere near the plants they'd like to attack next season, and they naturally die out... maybe you're already hip to this. beautiful garden! :)

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  5. mb, I did put the tomatoes and potatoes in new locations and still got the blight. If I'd been around more this summer, I could have caught it early and applied the topical copper spray before it decimated my potatoes and some of the tomatoes...but at least I still have some.

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