I would like you to post your pictures and experiences with last year’s garden. Everybody enjoy the pictures.
Last year was a challenge for me as it was the first year after a flood wiped out much of my plants, ruined the soil and washed away the raised beds. Most of the green on the pictures of the lower yard is sedge and plantain, not grass. I had to deal with a lot of plant disease and a cool summer didn’t help. Soil I had not worked up until last fall still had a bad smell in it. many plants that did survive were stunted in 2009.
You will see the new beds were built, the soil worked on, and the plants left to sprawl in the yard as the lawn was mostly dirt and weeds. You in fact see the work in progress that has much left to do. There is a picture of my remaining delphinium which consists of a 2x2 foot planting that was above the flood. I used to have the best delphinium bed, and miss it. Variety takes time, work and money to reintroduce and has to be done in the correct season. Some of the tomatoes I planted reached 10 feet in height. The larger broccoli plants were about 4 feet high when pulled in the fall. The pumpkins and squash were great. I was also happy with the sunflowers doing well. I had some really nice purple cone flowers and Black Eyed Susans.
Vegetables and edibles grown last year 2009:
Purple potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Nantes carrots
Indian corn
Gourds - not edible but I’m including them.
5 varieties of pumpkins - Hercules and Sugar to be grown again this year
Acorn, Butternut, and Buttercup winter squash
Grey and White Zucchini
3 varieties of cucumbers
6 Varieties of tomatoes
Bell, and Italian sweet peppers
Kentucky Wonder and Scarlet pole beans.
Sugar Snap, Super Sugar Snap, and Little Marvel peas
A couple mixes of leaf lettuce, Boston, and Romaine lettuce
Green onions
Nasturtiums
Chives
Dill
Plain basil and purple basil
Common and Lemon thyme
That was very nice! I enjoyed seeing the progression through the season. I love gardens.
Mine was not pictureworthy. It was our first summer in a new place, and the yard is only room size–like 15x15 ft, and mostly shady. I managed a few tiny containers of lettuce, tomato, and herbs, and a corner for morning glory and sunflowers.
I really want a garden next year - unfortunately I have never known how to plant one - Mom wasn’t much of a gardener.
I would like fower beds out front - I relaly like the wild flowers look, lots of different levels and blooms and grasses - as opposed to the really carefully cultivated look.
In the back I want veggies… I think I can manage the veggies, but am at a loss for the front. We are going to do three lstep-levelled raised beds.
I didn’t see this until now. I’ll get back to you tomorrow. My tip for today is start small and concentrate on that, instead of getting overwhelmed and giving up mid season.
Your black-eyed susans look just like blanket flowers (Gaillardia) - lovely. I enjoyed that slideshow - I’ve reached the point of winter where I’m dying for green, and dreaming about gardening just about every night. I’m going to organize my garden pictures a bit and then post some pictures from the yard of the house we sold last year. I have almost nothing going on in this yard yet - I have years of projects here.
It’s great that you’ll have some pictures. I don’t remember how good plants looked until I see the pictures I took. At that point I want to have the garden now. The pictures do help me remember how different plants grew and in looking for varieties on the web that were in mixes.
Poysyn I didn’t forget you, but you’ll need to give more details and it’s not going to be a quick paragraph to respond properly. You do have a while on this and I’m planning mine right now. Get ideas by browsing right now. I will help you.
Last night I shucked the ears of Indian corn I picked as the seed for this year. I’m already getting shades of greens, orange, pink, and blue. Hopefully I can have some really good selections in only a few years. Due to last year being such a cold year, at least half the corn didn’t produce usable ears of corn, so it got it’s first natural sort for being early and some other characteristics. I’d rather have been able to breed for ear size, multiple ears and stalk hardiness this early in adapting it. I’ll mix in some of last year’s seed to introduce some more randomness. Adding in a few seeds from other sources has always let what I breed for dominate yet adds in a few new variations that I may like and save the seed from.
I’d like to do some plant breeding, too. My dad had a greenhouse in the back yard, and he was always saving seeds and doing crossbreeding and noting results and stuff like that.
In our new yard I have one white peony (which will look much better once I get the supports in it), a sprinkling of lamium, and some trees. So much to do!
Thanks - they were all “learn as you go” projects. We decided early on that all of our plants should be appropriate for location, and I think that did most of the work for us.
I’m back to this thread as the season has progressed and I’ve caught up on some of the stuff. In a few weeks it will get really busy at times with seasonal gardening stuff. I’ve infect the niece well with the gardening bug. She’s 3 years old and 2 days after the raised beds lost the snow cover she was planing what would go there.
I’ve put together my list of seeds bought this year and have to get the seeds from last year added to it that I can use again. I need to take the list to stores and just to remind me when planting what I still have to plant. I need to get some aluminum plant markers cut for this year. They are the only thing with a permanent marker that I find readable a few weeks after putting in place.
On Thursday my first daffodil opened. Today I’ll pick some and bring them in to open as the weather is to get cooler. I have so many that some cut ones are not missed in the flower beds. They are bigger if they open for a couple days on the plant first.
I picked up a package of asparagus beans which I’ve wanted to try for a while. Local retailer have never had the seed available. I’ll definitely let a few go to the full length of about a yard long to be able to say look at these.
My raised beds have wintered well. I could hand dig down to a foot deep with a spading fork in much of the beds without double digging. I mulched the willow leaves and twigs with the mower and incorporated the mulch into the other half of the raised beds with a tiller. A load of horse manure like I got hold of last year would be better, but I make do the best I can with what I have available. The important thing is to get organic materials into the soil.
I will be planting peas and will start them in starter pots. I’ve learned that to plant them directly in the ground in certain places means the moles just eat 75% of the seed. The started ones are left alone when put in the soil. This way I can sprout them better in a warmer location too. I’ll also be inoculating all the legumes with nitrogen fixing bacteria.
My purple potatoes I grew last year are great potatoes and they were solid into February. The ones I saved for seed potatoes are sprouting now.
I picked up 5 varieties of Zinnia to plant this year. I wish I could have ordered this Benary’s Giant a German variety from Seed Savers Exchange that gets 4 feet tall. I like the old large varieties of flowers. They had a number of seeds I would have liked to buy. Smoke Signals is a gorgeous colored corn that can be used for decoration and popping. I’d like this even more than the zinnia. Look at the beautiful gourd mixes they have. These are really nice.
I’ve been out digging in my beds already (we don’t start planting here until the end of May). The warm winter has already thawed the ground, and I have A LOT of digging to do. I have to remember to put some potatoes aside for eyes, too. It seems so strange to me to have so much room in this yard, and have virtually nothing planted in it. Before we’d been in the house for a month last year, we had five shrubs and a handful of transplanted perennials planted. I’ve got my fingers crossed that they all over-wintered successfully.
At the end of April I can plant a few things like the potatoes and peas. Most started annuals are planted at the end of May. I’m in central Wisconsin. Getting the beds ready weeks before the plants have to go in is very useful. I also move around perennials at this time.
Wow, Harmonious, that was enjoyable to peruse through. You do really lovely things at your place and the diversity is amazing.
At the home I just moved from I’d designed a lot of disparate, fun elements into it and really enjoyed watching it mature from year to year. Now I’m starting all over and the setting is completely different. It’s much more formal and the first year I’ll probably refrain from doing anything new yet and just get to know the plants, drainage, soil quality, etc and just see what comes up naturally.
I’ll come back to this thread periodically for inspiration though. Thanks for starting it. The pictures are beautiful.
I’m doing a bit of that, too - my goal for this summer would be to get the shrubs in to get them started, but beyond that, I’m going to focus on preparing the beds properly (and aerating and over-seeding lawns, trimming the Manitoba maples, propping up steps - general groundskeeping stuff).
I have done formal and what you see as the cottage style. Had I lots of room you’d see more formal style beds. Cottage style leaves you wondering what will be two feet over when you look. I like taller plants too as the smaller garden becomes larger feeling. It’s important to grow what works in your yard and not what you’d always like that will do badly.
Last year I grew carrots and cosmos in the same spot without problems. I just kept the carrots about 6 inches from the cosmos roots. That way I didn’t waste space for just carrots. This year I have 3 types of carrots to plant, because I can’t eat those bland store bought ones now.
I think you can see how the food crops and flowers together make for a nice look. The cool weather edible plants can grow longer too when planted in the partial shade of taller flowers. I don’t always pull vegetables like lettuce that have nice accenting foliage. Lettuce and nasturtiums are one of my living mulch plants that retain soil moisture, reduce weeds, cool the soil for larger plant’s roots, and provide for beneficial insect habitat, while hiding the roots and stem of the target plant of some nasty insects like squash bores.
