Vegetable Gardening

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Spoke, those are just wonderful pictures!
I love all those pine trees, and how you got creative to take advantage of the full sun along your driveway. Clever.
I love seeing everyone's gardens- they are all so beautiful with their lush green things growing in all different types of environments!

Here is my old little veggie garden, which is now totally bursting with stuff. We've been harvesting huge amounts of fresh lettuces from it, with no end in sight yet. Most of the bright lightest green you see here is Black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce. It's very quick growing. Tomatoes are along the right wall, and bok choy nearest the camera, along the path. Also some romaine along the left side of path, further up.


And this morning the fence guys finally started erecting the big fence for the large new veggie garden which was previously useless back lawn. They are supposed to finish the fence in another two or three days:

You can just see some of the green rows of baby seedlings sprouting up in the garden already. They mostly about 2" high now, and are from the seeds i planted two weeks ago. I made a new sowing yesterday, and will plant more seeds in another two weeks again- this will hopefully make for staggered maturity times.

[spokewench]

Oh, your new big garden is wonderful! I wish I had enough sun in my yard to do something like that!

[Trek420]

Oh, your new big garden is wonderful! I wish I had enough sun in my yard to do something like that!

Me too. Or room I got a chard and golden chard plant at the local farm market today. Let's see if they survive in my patio.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Well it's all relative I guess.
We have friends with large rambling farmhouses and acres of fertile land, while we live on 1/3 acre sitting on rocky shale, which is why I had to BUY a whole mess of topsoil to put this garden in. We are foregoing some things in order to put this garden in. Yet, I do realize we are lucky indeed to have the space and the funds to do it.
My daughters both live in apartments with no yard at all. One has herbs in pots on the fire escape and is going to start growing wheat grass in her windowsills in trays- her little garden! I am sending her some other sprout seeds to grow in jars. You can grow sprouts anywhere inside- in jars, trays, or in hemp bags.
It's an art to find creative ways to raise edible things in the smallest and/or most unlikely places (as i'm sure some of you already do).
I read that some people grow oyster and other mushrooms under their kitchen sinks. I keep my worm-powered compost bin 'hive' in my kitchen, mostly because I enjoy them being right there to tend to them. Other people in apt's have their worm bins in their closets, or under the bed or under the sink, in a tupperware bin.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I discovered a whole bunch of ready to pick string beans that were hiding under the top leaves in my old little garden today.
I made them into a vinaigrette bean salad.
Here's the 'recipe' if anyone else has string beans from their gardens coming on now...(I didn't actually measure anything though):
http://strumelia.blogspot.com/2009/0...ean-salad.html

[tulip]

Lisa, I LOVE your "old" garden! You really packed it in. In my opinion, a garden should have "no dirt;" that is, no dirt visible. You can really, really get alot of production out of a small space if you plan it right.

Your new garden will be a delight, too, no doubt.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Lisa, I LOVE your "old" garden! You really packed it in. In my opinion, a garden should have "no dirt;" that is, no dirt visible. You can really, really get alot of production out of a small space if you plan it right.

I agree, the less dirt showing in a vegetable garden, the less weeding and less watering you have to do. Of course, I have almost nothing BUT dirt in the new garden right now. But planning, and sowing seeds is great fun too. I have a lot of little seedlings coming up now that I want to thin and move around a bit to even their spacing.

The fence guys are finishing the fence right now, in the steady rain for the past several hours. I hope it stops raining long enough for me to take a few pictures of the very impressive anti-varmint fence before it gets dark this evening. i think this fence will be there long after I'm dead and gone...hopefully with someone else happily gardening inside it.

Arielmoon- I feel your pain- I have not had a decent tomato harvest in 3 years now, and this year's crop don't look very promising either. Instead I did well with lettuce this year, what with all the cool weather and rain. Lately I am having GREAT fun 'farming' sprouts in jars, trays, and cloth bags in my kitchen- you might try sprouts if you want a quick confidence boost- they are really EASY and delicious! I'm totally hooked on sprout sandwiches now. I love their cool refreshing green-ness.