So I wanted to post some pictures from last year's first attempt at gardening in this new space. Before we bought our house, it was apparently, used as a rental and the yard suffered from a giant amount of neglect. With a wee tot in tow, plus both of us working full time, there's really only so much we can do in a weekend, so things are going slowly, slowly.
You can see the yard is kindy junky, but also here's one shot of the square foot garden Mom and her SO built for us and installed. We've got a trellis up on it to help save space when it comes to growing things like tomatoes, cucumbers and peas. By the end of the season last year, ONE tomato plant had taken over that entire 6 ft x 4 ft trellis.
 |
| Peas. The wee tot liked picking them straight off the vine so often, we frequently had a pea shortage. |
|
|
 |
| Better shot of the square foot garden |
So this is the corner of the back yard. Apparently the previous owners used the patio as an extra parking space. Wheee. It's also where we get the strongest and longest sunlight, so I'm planning on making the most of it and doing a lot of container gardening on it this year. We grew one brandywine tomato in a big pot here last year (you can see it in the background) and that worked fairly well, however, during giant storms, the pot had a tendancy to fall over. And we needed to water nearly daily when it wasn't raining, as the tomato took a TON of water. The plans this year include adding at least two more tomato pots for the patio. And I have plans for
a dwarf variety of pea.
This is mostly weeds, walking onions and mint. It's been the transplant bed for the past two summers, but we're turning it into vegetable garden. I have to admit, I'll be sad to see the walking onions go, but I'm hoping I can save some and move them elsewhere. They're just so very useful and require no work. As for the tranplants that are in here...the first job as soon as we can dig in the soil is to find new places for them around the yard.
 |
| Our yard is narrow, but deep... |
6 comments:
Pots and lawn are a hassle. Less lawn, more garden! :D
Mail me some walking onion?? :D
Well, we do need a spot for the dog to poo. :) But seriously, there's all sorts of lawn here that's going to be turned into garden. Just you wait. We just gotta go one step at a time.
I'd totally mail you some walking onion. They really were the nicest surprise when we bought the house. And there's part of me that's going to be sad to see them go.
Sweet, thanks! :D Give me a yell when you dig them up. . . And have fun tearing up the lawn1 Any idea what the soil underneath looks like?
Just based on the neglect in the yard, I've been inclined to say that the soil is not good at all. However, the soil garden with all of the mint and onions is actually fairly nice and loose, black and generally healthy looking. I suppose I should at least do an acidity test eventually. With the pine trees so very close, I'm guessing everything is fairly acidic.
i know you have limited container space, but have you considered using garden fabric to cover the soil? it's supossed to keep moisture in the soil and evaporate less. we used it last year (with mulch on top) to suppress weeds and it did great. we also watered maybe once a week and tomatoes went nuts.
i hear you can also lay down newspapers and cover with mulch.
i've never heard of walking onions. i'll have to look that up :)
Teresa: Say! That's a fantastic idea! Seeing droopy tomatoes was really, really sad. I was also thinking last night that I'll need to put heavier rocks in the bottom of the containers this year to help with the toppling over problem. Although, I'll probably still move the taller containers closer to the house during thunderstorms.
Post a Comment