So finally I have a chance to post the Grande Toure of my Garden (the extra "e"s make it look more fancey, don't you agree?). The one part I forgot to photograph is the pots on my deck, so we'll have to get those another day.
And here we go with Part 1: The Veggie Main
Here's the big view of my main veggie garden area. The original plan was to put all growboxes in, but after I discovered how much it was going to cost, I settled with the old fashioned rotatill and plant in rows.
I did get one "box" made with extra bricks that were on our property from previous owners' lanscaping - that's the one to the right that has those tall pole beans teepee style. I started out with lettuce and snap peas in that raised bed this spring, and tried to plant some bush beans in there but I put them out too early and the beans died. *cry* Then I added some carrots and more beans (which I thought were bush beans) in a pretty wavy line along the edge and tossed some marigold seads in between in what I thought was a clever and original design. Oh, and there are some asparagus right at the front end of the bed that were put in at the same time. Unfortunately for me, the carrots did not appreciate being transplanted so late, and the bush beans turned out to be pole beans, so my nice wave was quite disrupted, but it all works out in the end. Eventually I pulled out my lettuce (when I was sick of lettuce and it was starting to look seedy) and planted some impatiens there instead. The peas are due to be pulled out soon as well, which will be good since now the pole beans are trying to take over the whole bed!
Next I have my row of garlic and onions where I interplanted the rest of my beans (which I later found out are not suppose to be good to grow together). I had to string this fantastic web of twine around the pole beans (since I had thought they were bush beans and didn't have any fencing or what not to put up for them to grow on after I discovered they were in fact pole beans). It's not the best two hour I've ever spent, but at the time it was the best thing I could think of.
Right in the middle of my garden grows a big and beautiful hydrangea plant (behind the sunflower in the pic) (though it's mad at me this year and not giving me flowers because I trimmed it back earlier this spring rather than last fall). That is one of the few plants that was surviving when we bought this house, and I love hydrangeas so when we decided to tear up that area for a garden I couldn't bear to uproot my one prolific hydrangea. So we left it there, right smack in the middle.
Next comes my half row of carrots and then in the back on the other side of the hydrangea are my four zucchini plants (two green, two yellow). The carrots were an experiment where I simply tossed a bunch of seeds into the dirt in a big area and much to my surprise they ALL sprouted! My next mistake was waiting until they were bigger to pull out the weeds that were growing among them, because by then they were also big enough that trying to thin the carrots was much too tedious and frustrating. So I gave up and let them all grow in a giant patch. So far I dug up one corner just to see what was going on down there, and there are lots of short stumpy carrots that are all intertwined with the carrots around them. Oh well. Lesson learned: plant carrot seeds in thin rows, not in a patch.
Next comes my row with pumpkin plants on both ends and two squash plants in the middle (originally I thought I was planting a type of winter squash, but they ended up being white scallop squashed. I think the winter squash seeds were the ones that didn't really sprout. I put the pumpkins on the ends, thinking that would give them room to grow out, but I was expecting them to grow like zucchinis (which is the only squash I have ever grown) and didn't know that pumpkins vine out FOR MILES! And I couldn't let them grow out into the lawn, or I wouldn't be able to mow (that has near fatal consequenses for both my husband and I who are severely allergic to grass pollin/seeds) so I had them grow along the row, and they have looped back around, and I finally decided to let them now grow sideways through the corn which will be annoying to walk through but as of now they are taking over the whole three rows around them so that seemed like a better option. Next year I will have to figure out somewhere else to put them, I have yet to come up with a satisfactory solution.
The last two rows are corn, most of which I started inside so they are big and mostly tassled already with little baby corns growing on many of them. The local farms' corn isn't even that big, which is fun for me to see.
There is a little piddly row of raspberry transplants after the corn, which I put there this spring thinking that would be a better location than my original raspberry plants, but they have failed to thrive there and I realized that in fact that spot gets less sun than where I have my original plants, so they're getting pulled out this fall.
I also have a potato grow box against my fence, where I planted tons of little potatos I had started in pots, mostly purple taro potatoes and a few golden potatoes, but after I put them in I think the stinkin' moles ate all but two plants, cuz only one grew after that and I dug up quite a bit of the grow box today and found nothing, not even rotting remnants of potatoes. *cry some more* At least I got one healthy looking survivor, I hope I get some good purple potatoes out of that guy.
I planted sunflowers at the head of most of the rows, and some snapdragons which I started from seed (and are FINALLY growing bigger than sprouts) around the sunflowers. The sunflowers are getting big now and I think they may pop open soon!
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