A proper garden tour

Today I thought I would do a proper garden tour.

This is a corner post with a birdhouse. You can see the fence going both directions and also get a sense of the surrounding forest. Wrens have nested here several years but not this year.

I built small beds at the base of the fence posts to grow some flowers - Zinnia, blackeyed susans and morning glories. There are also some marigolds but by this time in the year they are overwhelmed by the other flowers.

Our garden is in a small field across a stream that runs under this large rock. We use as a bridge its wide enough for my lawn tractor and easy for wheelbarrow.

We have a few hanging baskets just for fun and color.

The plywood is the "bunny board" 🙂 we have chicken wire alone the base of the fence and put up this board to block the gaps around the gate. We have good luck keeping out the bunnies but squirrels are going to get over, under, through, around anything 🙁 There are green beans growing on the right of the gate and snap peas on the fence to the left.

All our veggie beds are raised beds. Due the poor soil, we built these beds several years ago using Hugelkultur (kind of). Basically wood and branches on the bottom, some green (leaves, grass clippings, etc), then soil on top. This bed has beets, some tomatoes, and a squash.

This is the first bed to the left as you enter the garden, it has some brussel sprouts and the cucumber trellis.

The next two beds have mostly tomatoes with some basil, peppers and a few egg plants.

This is from the other side. Unfortunately the morning sun was brutal when I was taking these photos.

Next comes the berry patches which are the only thing planted in the ground. They like our acid soil. This is the overgrown raspberries which will get a thorough cutting back eventually.

This horrible photo is the blueberries. They had a great year. Lots of blueberries in the freezer.

I expanded the fenced in area two years ago and added this bed. I built a small hill (Hugelkultur style) and my wife planted it with squash and pumpkins. Its hard to get closer due to the vines lol eventually we let them go through the fence and fend for themselves versus the deer.

Here's the view from the other side. You can also see our small cold frame in these shots. We got it from a neighbor that built a bigger one and we had been wanting one. We used it primarily for hardening off our seedlings before planting them. We grow everything from seed (except a few flower annuals for the baskets) in our garage. We have a set up with heating pads and grow lamps but thats another story for another time.

Here's the last few beds. I call them finger beds. I originally built them to put along the base of the fence for a little more space to plant but that didn't really work out. So now they are here. Still looking for a good use. This year they had radishes, lettuce, a few small onions. Replanted with some leftover turnip seeds. Probably will go back to some lettuce when it cools down.

Thats the grand tour.

Sun rise is always pretty over the garden.

Here's the path back to the house. This goes to back yard. I built it because we have to drag a hose over from the house through the swamp to water the garden. Its nice not to have to slog through the mud pulling a heavy hose.