Evolution of a Garden

In order to better appreciate our little garden, follow me on a tour of its creation.

11 May 2007

A few weeks earlier, we had a nice rain which our lush weeds really enjoyed. We got a few "before" shots so we wouldn't forget what we conquered (and so we could show all of you!). When we opened the gate to the garden, this is what we found:

(Notice the distinct looking plant close to my right hand. This is Swiss chard. It reseeded itself from years past and was growing out of control. We ended up trimming it down (several times) and allowing it to grow again. You can use the chard as a point of reference for the other pictures.)

We weeded the entire garden area by hand. For a few weeks, we spent just about every evening weeding. We would choose a spot and then race the sun to see if we could get the particular area cleared before the sun was completely down. Each week we filled our two trash cans with weeds from our growing pile.

We borrowed a front-tine tiller from a neighbor, then finally got things planted! Besides the tomatoes and peppers, we started everything from seed inside.

5 June 2007

By now we have quite a few plants in the ground.

In the very small row at the left of the picture, you will see some little corn growing at the far end. These are our "volunteer" corn. That's why they have a row to themselves.

In the next row over, you can't see much, because we planted seed here. In the middle of the row, where the spots of wet are, you can see little tiny broccoli plants. At the end of the row we have some sweet corn that we transplanted.

In the center foreground of the picture, you'll see the Swiss chard that I mentioned. Behind the chard are a few tomatoes still in pots. You can't see them, but behind the tomatoes we have 2 hills of regular cucumbers, 2 hills of Armenian cucumbers, and a hill of zucchini. Further back in the same row, you can see a tall chard plant which we later removed (neither of us like chard).

In the last row, we have 6 tomatoes, 2 peppers, 4 hills of zucchini and 2 hills of yellow squash.

Below is a view from in the garden looking back up to the gate. Notice the pile of weeds.

13 June 2007

Hopefully you can see a little progress now. All of the tomatoes are in and some have cages. The radishes and turnips have sprouted on the left. We still do not have our watering system in place.

We planted everything in Squashland, the lower end of the garden, where the plants are not in rows, just hills. In Squashland, we have 1 hill of banana squash, 3 hills of pumpkins, 2 hills of acorn squash, 2 hills of cantaloupe, 2 hills of watermelon, and several potato plants (mostly volunteers that we discovered while weeding.

Here's a view from Squashland.

23 June 2007

We finally got the soaker hoses arranged in the rows. We used black plastic as mulch.

Here's a view of just the corn. The corn is at all different stages. The volunteers are the biggest, then the transplants, then the seeds we planted directly to fill in the holes.

3 July 2007

Here's how the garden looks today. We got some straw to mulch down in Squashland and in the corn. We also used some on a few of the tomatoes that the soaker hose doesn't get to.

This is today's view from the top:

Today's view from the bottom:


Today's view of Squashland:

That was a lot of garden history to catch up on. We are really enjoying our little garden!