Garden Update

Let me give you a little vegetable garden tour this week!

Start at the gate to the main gardens.  

First you will find the large raised bed that my mother cares for that is simply stuffed full of growing  thriving plants and an abundance of kale!

Turn left through the gate and you come into my herb garden in the spiral and a series of 4 raised beds.  These beds were designed to hold things that I would need to harvest daily: greens, beans, tomatoes, etc.

In the photo below you can see both the raised beds as well as the larger garden in the background.

This garden I call my ‘manure garden,’ since I flattened and mounded up a big pile of old manure to build the garden.  Despite the name, this garden is amazing.  The inner space consists of 8 mounded beds surrounded by squash on the entire perimeter.  The beds have potatoes, popcorn, onions, cucumbers, broccoli, beans, okra, tomatoes, tomatillos, husk cherries, turnips, carrots and of course a few other things I can’t remember.  I’m hoping to create a path around the entire garden next year to make it easier to access the squash.

Heading back up towards the house is the children’s garden with the sunflower house that is almost in bloom.

Don’t forget to stop off at the patio on the way by for a break.

Now we end up at the row garden that has struggled a bit this year with the weather and some lackadaisical watering.  The corn is finally looking a bit better and the beans and squash are hanging in there.  The idea behind this garden is that we would only visit a couple times a week for upkeep and harvesting.

Up in the pasture we’ve also put in a series of small hills for winter squash.

Since our strawberries did not do well (see the watering problem above) we added some tomato plants to the bed for this year and will fill in as needed in the spring.

The harvest is on now, bringing new treats into the kitchen everyday.

How’s your garden growing?

Each Friday I share photos from our garden with an update about what we’re doing, what’s growing, and what we’re eating.  I invite you to come play along, I love seeing what others are trying.  You can join the fun in 2 ways:

• If you blog, I welcome you to write a post or share a post from that week about what’s growing in your garden 
• If you aren’t a blogger, I invite you to join my gardening flickr group and share photos of your garden from this week
• And last – if you don’t want to blog or share photos, just follow along and check out all the links and photos and maybe share a comment with your own gardening experience from the week