Thursday, May 30, 2013

Busy busy!

This weekend I'm heading up to Lovell, Maine to preach at a little church there. This has left me little in the way of blogging time. However, I did do work on the garden with Ms. T's help, so here are some pictures to tide you over!


This is the front garden, which is basically right outside our front door. The hydrangea was my Mother's Day gift from the twins last year, and the sweet william was this year's gift! The pansies are sis's beautiful annuals. I do need to build this garden up a bit, but it's so pretty when it's in full bloom.


This is what I am guessing will end up being the squash bed. It got dumped full of unsifted dirt, and now we're working our way through it and putting the dirt in different beds. We've finally gotten it down far enough that we can start putting soil back into it (sifted, of course). This is one of the new beds. In the back of it, you can just see the split rhubarb/horseradish bed.


Ah, there's my rhubarb! That's the stuff I planted last year, and which we transplanted to this bed a few weeks ago. There are two more rhubarb crowns in that bed, and two in the bed closest to the camera (beside the stone). The back of the rhubarb bed is filled with four horseradish roots, which I hope will come up.


 This is (will be) our asparagus bed. We have two kinds of asparagus to plant in it, and it's the next on our sift list. Beside it will be a bed of strawberries. These are right under sis's window, and ought to provide an interesting visual!


These lovely window boxes were created by sis last weekend, to cover up the gravelly messy part beside our front steps. However, with the torrential rains, they have gotten so waterlogged that I had to bring them onto the porch. I'm going to leave them here for a few days until they dry out. 
 

This is the start of the rock wall that Ms. T is making. You can just see the two loads of dirt in the left of the picture, which will be filling up the entire space. The yard slopes down at that point, and we're going to flatten it out and bring it into a berm that is held in place by the rock wall. Ms. T has some great talents, and rock building is definitely high on the list. I just don't have the patience for it!


My kale and broccoli, unlike the rest of the plants, have really loved the frosts of the past week. They're growing like crazy! I am hoping that the heat they're predicting for this week won't stunt the growth that's been happening. They're in a shadier part of the yard, so I'm holding out hope.


My potatoes are ready to have another tire stacked on top. They're really lush and looking good, much nicer than last year's greenery.


 This is a long view of the side yard where the garden is. The empty bed you see is actually going behind the pea bed and beside the squash bed, but we're using the backhoe to move dirt, so we can't block in that squash bed until it's full. To the right you can see the two tire beds, and beyond those (out of the picture) are the herb tires.


This is the bed that we put together last year with just logs. It's a hugelkultur bed,  meaning there are punky logs and branches and leaves buried under the soil, providing nutrients and helping to hold moisture in. We raised this one up a bit, because the single logs weren't providing enough room for things to grow. So the bricks from the dismantled fire pit became one side (and the little holes are going to get filled with flowers and green onions!), and the log that was on that side got piled up on the other side. Now it's twice as deep, and full of gloriously rich composted soil.


My peas (left) and tomatoes (right) seem to be doing alright. We doubled the height of the pea fencing this year, because last year we had the peas falling over and grabbing other plants. I think we're safe this time! The tomatoes are doing better than they look here, as these were freshly battered by a storm. They're much perkier now, and most of my non-cherry tomatoes are planted in this bed. To the far right is a staggered row of romaine lettuce, which I hope will enjoy the shade it's soon to get from the tomato plants.


 The big green things are radishes, intermixed with carrots. I desperately need to thin out the radishes. We're going to be collecting the leaves, dehydrating them, then turning them into a slightly spicy powder to use in sauces and stews. The other half of this bed has baby beets in it, which also need to be thinned and weeded, but I have to wait 'til they're a bit bigger.


The tires are going to be planted with pole beans either this weekend or early next week. A three pole tee pee will go up in each tire, and then jute cord or wire will be twined around. The beans will be planted in a circle, and be trained up the legs and jute. I expect these to get up to 12 feet high!

So there's my little update. :) I promised pictures to people, and so I have kept good on my promise! What's your garden up to?

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You may also be interested in:

Insanity in the garden
Garden update and my contest win
It doesn't have to be expensive
Making maple syrup
Peas - an early, cool weather crop

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