Overview Tour of the Garden

I used to do overhead shots of the garden on a regular basis but not any more. At the new garden I don't think the shots are as nice. I can do better if I take the screens off of the guest room windows, but I've found that I can't get them back on again. My husband struggles with them too. So I just use the hall window and leave the screen off year round. We never open that window anyway. But even if they aren't as nice they do give you a good feeling for how the garden is set up and what is happening over time.

There are eight 4'x16' beds in the garden along with a few others. Here are bed 8 through bed 4. Bed 8 is the one closest to the shed. It is the allium bed with garlic toward the path and onions toward my neighbor's driveway. Bed 7 contains my radishes that I've started harvesting. The bed will eventually be the bean bed, but not until it warms up a bit. Bed 6 is one of the squash and corn beds. The 4'x8' section closest to the path had corn planted in it yesterday. Bed 5 is under the row covers. It contains the brassicas and the chard. The front 4'x8' section is the brassica bed I showed you earlier in the week. Once the spring brassicas are harvested, I'll plant some fall carrots. The 4'x8' section closest to the fence contains broccoli and chard and will stay there for the whole year. Bed 4 contains a whole host of things. My peas, carrots, lettuce, bunching onions, marjoram, celery, parsley and beets are already in, but there is still a section reserved for cumin. I keep trying to grow cumin here and haven't succeeded in getting a stand growing yet. Maybe this year.

These are beds 3-1 (left to right). The front section of Bed 3 has my fava beans. You can see a strip in the front that is empty. It will eventually contain my basil. When the fava beans are finished, I'll put in some fall brassicas. The back section has last years bunching onions that are going to seed and my mustards. I'm trying to grow yellow and brown mustard seed. I've given them a lot of space, but not the whole bed. At the end I'll have my one and only solanum, a Cherokee Purple tomato and an epazote plant. Neither of which are planted yet. I'm not sure what I'll plant after the mustards are out. I'm sure I'll think of something. Bed 2 hasn't been planted yet. It will be my melon, cucumber, and zucchini bed. Right now the cilantro has taken over. I need to mow it down before it goes to seed. I don't want a mass of cilantro seed here again. Bed 1 is the spinach bed. The overwintered spinach is gone, but the spring spinach is doing well under the row cover. In June this bed will be planted in squash and corn, but it will have the later sowing of the corn. Right now the schedule reads June 4th and June 21st sowing. I might change that up or I may not.

The strip along my white fence is a flower and herb bed. My bleeding heart is in bloom, next to it I transplanted a bit of lemon balm last week. Then there are the achillea, chamomile, tarragon (which is struggling) and the anise hyssop. Along the back of the chamomile I have sown some zinnias and there are a couple of cosmos in there too. In the summer it will be one wall of flowers. I'll have to remember to cut back the anise hyssop before it sets seed though. I found out it self seeds readily and I've been pulling out seedings all spring. I don't want to do that again next year. I'll do the same for the lemon balm if I can catch when it is in bloom. The chamomile tends to be an aggressive self seeder here too, but since I need it to reseed, I'll just put up with the weeding chore.

This is part of the strip along the wall. On the left you can see the cilantro going to seed. If you look hard, closer to the wall is a line of plants that have just come up. They are my sunflowers. In front of those I've transplanted self seeded sweet alyssum. I was hoping I wouldn't have to start those indoors anymore I'm hoping they just come up. It turns out they do but only in the garden beds themselves. They don't like this herb bed as much. Luckily I can transplant easily. Farther to the right are two of my rosemary plants. Then some forget-me-nots. In the pots are three of my four mints (the other is in a pot by the front door with some pansies). In front is some self seeded borage and tucked between are some jump-ups that are all purple. These seemed to come with the soil that was brought in. I let them seed last year and this year there are more. The last plant is my climbing rose. It hasn't made it over the arch of the fence yet, but I think it might get there this year. I'm hoping.

I tried to take this photo, but the camera insisted on focusing on the screen instead. You can sort of see what is down below. This is the circle garden. The garden itself has an 'L' shape. The rest was on my side yard. This is in my back yard right outside my kitchen. There are steps from my sliding door that go right down to the brick path. As you can see I look directly into the composting area. I screen most of it with some reed fencing. I have two black composters. The one on the left is the active one for kitchen waste. It has some hardware cloth on the bottom to keep any rodents out. I empty it occasionally into the pallet compost bins where I put all the garden waste and store leaves from the fall for composting all year round. The plant in front of the other black composter is a sage plant and the one I've been harvesting from all winter long. That composter I use to put finished compost into. Right not it is sadly empty. I want to make a screener to fit over the top of it so I can screen compost directly into it. I haven't done it yet.

The garden itself has my herb circle with two thymes, oregano, chives, garlic chives and rosemary. I'm fighting the dill and borage seedlings. I should never have let them go to seed here. Under the row cover are my baby Asian greens and some Fun Jen. The other bed is my kale that is going to seed. Both of these two beds will have sweet potatoes this summer. But they won't get planted for a few weeks yet. The soil has to really warm up first.

That is most of what is in the garden. Little corners have been missed which include my rhubarb and another sage and oregano plant. And it doesn't show the plants outside my white fence. But maybe I'll get to that another day.