I dug out the paths and added the extra dirt to the beds to raise them a bit. The straw for the paths insulated the outside of the north wall of our basement over the winter. We got the straw bales from neighbor, organic farmer and sustainable agriculture activist, Charlie Johnson. 06/16/07
Left: carrots and cilantro direct seeded. Right: Cucumbers direct seeded. This was my first time growing cukes. Now I know they need a LOT more room! 06/16/07
Tomatoes, paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and sweet peppers. Used leaf mulch immediately around each plant, then straw mulch around that. Planted the peppers way too close to the tomatoes. Next year I'll plan for more room for almost all of my plants. 06/16/07
More tomatoes and peppers, plus calendula planted on the right. 06/16/07
Beans and nasturtium. Next year the beans need better trellising (bean teepees?) and the nasturtium should get its own bed. 06/16/07
Sweet corn. organicgardening.com tells me I should have planted it in a square rather than rows for best pollination. 06/16/07
Sunflowers 06/16/07
Raised beds. Front: spinach and lettuce planted too late and overgrown with weeds. Ah well. Middle: tomatoes and chives. Yet again, planted too close together. Back: zinnias sprouting. 06/17/07 Next year all of these beds plus a couple more will be planted with herbs. In the spring I'll divide the chives to fill its entire bed.
This nifty bin that Cory made out of pallets leftover from our house construction stores grass clippings and leaves for composting and mulching. The bags on the left are full of leaves that spent last winter insulating the ground around the water pipes going into our cabin located just down the hill. They'll get used for mulch on the garden or put into the compost pile. 06/17/07
Compost bin where all of our veggie scraps end up. I asked Cory to build this for my birthday one year. Yep, that's how much of a nerd I am. I asked for a compost bin for my birthday. And would you believe I didn't want a diamond engagement ring? Ah, but that's another post for another time. 06/17/07
Bunny damage! ARGH!!! Rabbits destroyed a good portion of baby sunflowers. 06/26/07
More rabbit damage plus an attempt to prevent further munchies. 06/26/07
Learning to live with weeds surrounding the July garden. Cory was also experimenting with a garden gate. 07/16/07
The carrot and cilantro patch. Hmmm, looks a lot like last month's photo, doesn't it? Absolutely nothing germinated. Ugh. Must not have kept the seed bed watered enough. 07/16/07
The three surviving and flourishing cucumber plants. 07/16/07
Tomato and pepper plants in the foreground. More tomatoes in the background. Two transplanted raised beds on the left. Cory brought them over from their previous home in our cabin's yard. 07/16/07
Beans, nasturtium, and corn. Bunnies got to several bean plants in addition to the sunflowers. 07/16/07
The nasturtium wins the prettiest leaf contest in my garden. I love its shape and color. 07/16/07
In the middle of about 25 stalks of sweet corn and a few volunteer cherry tomato plants below. 07/16/07
Cukes 07/28/07
The view I'm forced to look at while gardening. Tragic, isn't it? 07/28/07
Zinnia blooms! Note: the paths around these raised beds looked MUCH better by October. 07/28/07
Professional landscapers we are not. Although, Cory did do an amazing job on the stone wall, didn't he? He built an even taller one on the other side of our front porch. All local fieldstone from a couple nearby farms. Next year's mission: weed control. I'm also contemplating buffalo grasses and some prairie flowers in this sore spot in front of the wall. 07/28/07
This area will be next year's addition to the garden. I'm planning to at least double this year's size, possibly triple it. 07/28/07
A sample from the August garden. 08/13/07
08/19/07
Sunflower mix 08/19/07
Doing my part to combat the declining bee population. 08/25/07
Sunflowers are so photogenic. How about one more picture? 08/25/07
Unfortunately, I petered out on my garden picture-taking around September but did manage to get in a shot of just one of the many bowlfuls of cherry tomatoes we enjoyed. 09/19/07
The sweet peppers didn't get nearly the room or attention they deserved. As a result, they were few and late. That did mean, though, that we got to enjoy our last garden pepper all the way into November. 11/07/07
