Our Garden Patch
In 2004, we will be concentrating on a new project that we have been planning for a long time, our own greenhouse. We will also be working on our raised beds and the landscaping part of our "edible landscaping" program. We will be adding lots of things in our projects for this year.
In 2003, our new roof project was the main project going on, so our raised bed projects got put on hold. We planted our flower beds and tire patches, though. We also replaced some of our orchard trees and planted more grapes and berry bushes. We also planted "patches" here and there, including popcorn, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc. in different flower beds around the property.
In 2002, I decided I just was not up to the big garden patch and fighting with weeds, bugs, heat, sun, and mud to get a few vegetables. I swore I was not going to plant a garden at all. (yeah, right). One son brought me some tomato plants that someone gave to him. We went to the Baker Creek seed convention and bought ONE packet of seeds (yellow watermelons). Another son cleaned out the big stone flower beds out front, digging out weeds and plants, and turning over all the soil. He also went through all the tire beds and did the same thing. Then he helped me plant the tomato plants. He went and scrounged up all the tomato cages out back, and we caged the plants. Ok, that got me in the spirit a bit. I went and got some pepper plants and a packet of lettuce seed, and finished those beds up with that. Then we planted watermelon seeds in all the tire beds. Pat's grandmother also kindly sent him some strawberry plants from Illinois, and they were huge. Pat planted some and gave us some, and Shawn planted them for me. We also got a LOT of the orchard done in this year! Now, I think I am hooked on this raised bed thing. These tomato plants are HUGE, as are the pepper plants. The lettuce has not done real well, but that's okay. The tomatoes are delicious. We are going to set up more raised beds for gardening next year, and will be setting most of it up in front of the house and in the island (between our road and the drive). This will all be much handier and easier to take care of. And, we WILL get a Mantis! :)
Sugar Mountain's Garden Patch, 2001
One of the first steps to planting a vegetable garden is to have a plan! Below is a layout of our vegetable garden and where everything will
(theoretically) go. The measurement scale is each box equals 3 square feet, so all the rows will be 3 feet apart. This is so we can use a rototiller in weeding later. It is so much easier when you actually start planting, though, if you
have a pretty good idea of where everything is going to go in advance.
Two things we already had along the bottom (or east) edge of our garden spot are an asparagus bed and gooseberry bushes. We were glad to see the asparagus bed. We both love asparagus, and it takes a while to get a bed started from scratch. Directly North of the gooseberry bushes, though, is an old cement pad in the ground (which will be the future location of our pagoda), our outside water hydrant, and the garage, which is why that corner ended up being angled off the way it is.
Here is a layout of how our first garden looked in the end.
Here's how our garden ended up this year. It has an electric fence all the way around it this year to keep the goats, chickens, rabbits, etc. out of it.
OUR MELON PATCH(ES)
As big as our vegetable garden is, we just did not have room in it to put our melons also. We bought 2 varieties of watermelons (Sugar Baby, and yellow meat watermelons), cantaloupe, and honeydew melons. These vining melons, etc., take up a lot of room. The vines will take over a garden if they get a chance. That left us with the problem of where to put them. We have an pretty big area set aside for pasture, but we didn't want to use that area for melons. We finally decided to sow the melons in sets of tires, in various areas around the property, rather than all in one big patch. So, actually, we have several melon "patches", rather than one. Rather than work up several small patches around the place with the tiller, Lee decided to try planting them in tires. We'll see how this experiment turns out! So far, as of May 24th, it's working out great. We also planted sunflowers along the back side of the house.
This year, we have a rototiller. Lee put up electric fence around the garden area to keep the goats, chickens, rabbits, etc., from eating it. He has been working on the fence lines to open up a much larger pasture area for them this year. We found this tiller at a bargain price in one of our local shoppers, and Lee repainted it back to John Deere green and yellow. It also runs great! Here is our new (used) tiller:
This next photo is Lorne, one of our neighbors, plowing our garden that first summer we planted. You can see our hedge border bushes in the background. Those are planted all along the road edge, and they definitely keep the gravel dust down.
The first year we planted garden here, we had almost 2 weeks of weather where the temperatures were over 100 degrees every day, and 25 days without rain. Finally, it rained and the temperatures cooled off some, but really not in time to save our garden. The tomato vines dried up, corn, lettuce, everything. The weeds seem to survive everything. However, don't think all that work and effort has been for nothing. We learned a lot that we could use the following spring to try again! The homesteaders motto: Never give up!
Updated 3/28/04