Plastic to keep the nasty lead down in the ground.
8 x 8 from wall to wall, shutters on the window, no light at all (obscure Peter Gabriel reference there).
The screws.
After speaking to an organic farmer, we discovered all we need is composted soil.
We wouldn't have bought any of this had we known better at the time.
"Composted enriched" is better than just plain top soil, but plain compost is best for raised beds.
Composted soil is already made from peat moss, so peat is unnecessary (unless you use top soil).
We spent a lot of money on top soil. Lifting and emptying the bags wasn't much fun either.
Digging in dirt, to find the places we got hurt (less obscure Peter Gabriel reference there).
Dirt so fine you could eat it.
The garden will get full sunlight for only 6 hours a day, and partial sunlight the rest of the time, which should be good enough.
5 foot potato tower!
The potato tower will grow to about 4 feet as the potato plants grow and we continue to add soil.
We keep adding boards along the sides as the added soil gradually pushes the potato plants up.
Theoretically, the whole thing should fill with potatoes.
Tower yield should be around 20 cubic feet of potatoes in the end. I don't know how much that is, but it's a lot of spuds.
And now we fill it up with composted soil.
Tower and garden bed with some compost soil. (Can you spot the cats?)
3 big backhoe scoops of composted soil ($200) finished the job.
Done! (After a couple hours of shovelling.)
After a mixing in of lime.
Raking before planting.
Potato tower -- yeah!
The auto white balance on our camera needs adjustment.
The Master Plan.
Beans in illustration are drawn to scale.
8 x 8 feet. 2,400 litres of soil.
Way too many strawberry plants packed into container, but what the hell. We'll see what happens.
Strawberries, blueberries, potato tower and garden bed.
Added this board for easier access. (That's a row of beets sprouting on the left of the board, carrots on the right, which can't be seen, and peas on the far right.)
Peas sprouting. They began breaking through less than a week ago.
1 of 4 tomato transplants.
4 freshly planted tomato plants.
I'll call him... Nemo.
Tomatoes, lettuce, beets, carrot and peas (beans not sprouted yet).
Left side of garden bed.
Temporary greenhouse for lettuce.
Lettuce grown from transplant.
Beet.
Someday this will be a wall of peas.
Digging hole for strawberries (white balance sucks again).
Approx. 3 x 4 and 2 feet deep. Biodegradable weed guard lining to keep out most of the lead too for a few years.
There are tiny sunflowers against the fence.
Strawberry patch, freshly dug and planted.
Plastic bottles act as greenhouse to help the little guys along and to protect from frost.
June 21, 2009.
Strawberry patch doing alright.
June 27, 2009.
Lettuces looking good. That's a zuc in the corner.
Strawberries.
July 04, 2009.
Yo, gnome!
Lettuce thriving.
July 09, 2009.
Never looks as impressive from this angle.
Zuc we have growing in soil container. Kind of a fluke. We'll see what happens.
July 11, 2009.
We've been eating lettuce just about every day for the past 2 weeks.
Spider catching lots of flies around strawberry plants.
Our first radish, grown in a small plastic flower box.
These suckers grow fast.
Nicely mapped out garden.
The zucchini doesn't have much room to grow.
July 18, 2009.
Carrots and peas.
Beets greens covering over the lettuce.
Lettuce losing ground to beets.
Thinning off a few small beets.
Huge beet greens, delicious when steamed.
Beets slightly wilted probably because we thinned them yesterday.
July 20, 2009.
First sign of tomatoes.
Cucumber in greenhouse.
Tomato plants in greenhouse.
3rd level of potato tower doing fine.
Zucchini taking over garden.
Zucchini, lettuce, onions, beets, carrots -- all crowding in on each other.
Peas crowding in on carrots. The garden is getting out of control.
Not a lot of room once things really start to grow.
We should have had one pole for each bean plant. The horizontal string idea didn't work at all.
Zucchini.
Most of the beets are ready for harvesting.
A quarter to provide scale.
We're not letting the beets grow too large because they might become fibrous.
The beet greens, including the stems, are fantastic.
Mint
Container Zucchini
Jungle garden
Zucchini Plant Gone Bananas!
Massive beets.
Floating Gnome Head
Cucumber flower
July 31, 2009.
Cucumber plant (growing across, not up).
Green Onions
Chives
Peas!
Some of the first peas.
Winston.
August 03, 2009.
Bean flowers.
It Came From Our Backyard ! ! !
August 05, 2009.
Jenny holding a pea.
Zucchini in container.
August 08, 2009.
Cucumbers starting to grow.
4th level of potato tower (40 inches high).
Big beets. Had to pick them because greens were starting to taste bitter.
Greenhouse tomatoes.
Random sampling.
Goes good with roast chicken.
The carrots probably won't get much bigger in a 12-inch-deep garden bed. When they can't grow down, they grow up and the stems get really long (more than a foot tall now, flopping over).
No problems with the zucchinis.
5 little cucumbers.
August 20, 2009
Ready for picking.
Our first scrawny bean. Where ya been bean?
Overgrown lettuce and a cucumber surrounded by zucchinis.
Some of today's harvest.
Today's harvest, not including the peas.
We had no idea zucs could grow like this. What a fantastic plant.
Last of the beets.
The last 3 beets.
Red onions.
Romane lettuce hanging in there but still edible.
August 26, 2009.
Scarlett Runner beans. It's a pretty plant.
August 29, 2009.
6 zucchinis.
Rosemary and a touch of Nigel.
Zucchini beat down by rain storm.
Garden bed minus zucchini (killed during heavy rain fall).
September 02, 2009.
No more zucchini plant. No more beets either. And only one lettuce near the back.
Right half of garden bed (garlic, carrots, cucumbers, peas and beans in the back).
Last of the zucchinis from the garden bed (killed off early by big storm).
Last of the peas.
The last zucchini.
Last of the romaine lettuce.
Potato plants stopped growing around 1st week of September.
Tomatoes weren't large, but they weren't small either.
Not many peas left at this point.
So we tore down the peas hoping maybe the cumbers would expand.
September 14, 2009. Cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, red onions, all doing well.
September 14. Cucumber plant starting to go.
September 22, 2009.
Some of the last cucumbers.
Mint flower.
September 29, 2009.
The end is near.
October 12, 2009. Red onions about to go.
That's a limpy garlic on the right.
Spring-planted garlic. Waste of garden space. Won't do it again next year.
October 14, 2009. That's snow in the garden.
Very last of the scarlet runner beans.
Very pretty, but they went bad because we didn't know what to do with them.
Big beans.
Big crap apples. A bit tart, but excellent for apple sauce.
October 17, 2009. Time to pick the last of the carrots.
Stubby but fat and juicy.
Last of the carrots.
The last bunch.
They can't grow long because our garden bed is only 12 inches deep, but they grew wide at least.
October 24, 2009. The end. And a sprinkle of lime. See ya next year.
