We’ve begun our plantings again this year. Tomatoes, squash, cabbage, green beans, strawberries, some herbs, and assorted other things. Someone last year requested pictures of our raised garden to see the layout, but we didn’t have any.
Now we do. There are six beds, 2 x 2 long-ways, and a perpendicular bed at each end.
Your azaleas are beautiful! Ours is budding right now…I figure we have about a week before it blooms. Of course, we only have one, and it’s in a very large pot because we’re in the middle of the city.
I did a general garden photo post on my LiveJournal yesterday, complete with our just-discovered rose cooties…
It’s raining currently, but when it stops I’ll grab a few photos of our garden. So far, Only the eggplants have begun to set fruit, other than a few rogue peppers. The burgundy beans are in flower, and the peas are climbing well. Our tomatoes are dawdling along for some reason. Cucumbers sprouted yesterday as did the beets. Watermelons and strawberries are doing fine. I spent part of the week building a natural stick arbor in between the beds, and we container planted moonflower and morning glories to cover it, hopefully by the end of summer, so that it will shade the vegetables a bit from the florida sun.
I’m not sure I’d recommend it for an actual in-ground situation. As you can see, it’s VERY invasive. If you had a big, barren hillside area to plant, I’d say sure. If you’re looking for a cover for your decorative planting areas, I’d say no. The only reason they’re manageable for me is that the area they have to go is very limited and they die back in the winter. In the south…I’m not sure if they’d have a climatic check.
Note: our cucumber patch is off by the patio area in the “facing west view” photo. Everything else is listed from left to right:
front row- bell peppers (green, red, purple and “chocolate”), Thai hot peppers, “Cherry Hot” peppers, Stevia, beets (see packet area and “bare patch”)
back row- sugar snap peas, roma tomatoes, strawberries, eggplants, burgundy beans, watermelon, “Toad Hall”
Thanks, it was pretty easy to build. Take some metal poles and pound them into the ground, one for every 6 ft in length. Gather up a bunch of hardwood dead-fall and first tie your verticals to the poles using wire, leaving a V shaped portion at the tops if you can. Lay your horizontal “roof beams” in and tie them off. Now take those thin bamboo stakes you can buy for staking up veggies and lay them out across the roof beams like the rungs on a railroad track. Wire them off. Interlace the rest going over/under until you’ve got a roof lattice. Tie your lattice in place with zip-ties at each juncture and you are ready to plant! I added a few candle holders and a hanging lantern for later after the vines cover it up. Other than gathering the wood, it probably only took about 4 hours to build total time, including waterproofing the branches and waxing the “foot beam”.
Liberal, is the fence to keep deer out? Here in the city, we don’t have a problem with deer, but we do have a major problem with squirrels. I basically have to grow stuff they don’t like. And I can’t imagine what it would take for me ever to get walnuts from my tree. The squirrels make me fall into despondency sometimes.
Frankly, it was meant for rabbits and squirrels but it doesn’t really work. And it’s too short to keep out deer. What we actually use that works is fox pee. We buy it in bottles from the feed and seed store and pour it around the perimeter of the garden every couple of weeks. We’ve never had a critter eat a single plant or vegetable. We did find a rabbit in there once, hunkered among the watermelon vines, shivering with fear probably wondering where the foxes were. We “rescued” him out of there, and he never came back.
Lysimachia nummularia aurea, if I remember the name aright, is an excellent groundcover. It’s invasive in that it spreads readily, but it won’t choke anything out; pretty much the ideal groundcover. When I was doing garden design I used to buy it by the dozen flats. A major staple plant.
I hate all of you bastards. This is what my garden looks like right now. Well, those pictures aren’t my particular garden, but they are my city, and my yard is still under the 20 centimeters of snow we got.
Thyme is an excellent groundcover, too. There are tons of varieties of thyme - I plan to try Mother of Thyme this year - it’s gorgeous. Bressingham thyme has a beautiful trailing habit if you have some place to have it trailing.
ETA: I was going to say that I too have no problem with Creeping Jenny as a groundcover. It does creep, but it can be contained with a little weeding. It’s not like that damned Kentucky Bluegrass that you can’t get out once you put it in.
Yeah, me too. It’s hard to be upbeat and happy when you look out the window on snow, and the temperature is still -11ºC. IT’S ALMOST MAY, YOU STUPID WEATHER GODS!!! I WANT MY GREEN, AND I WANT IT NOW!!!1!!! I’ve been dreaming about plants for months now.
The golden/creeping jenny — do you think it would make a good groundcover?
