Garden panoramas

Well, I've taken the end of August panorama and I thought I'd show off the progression of the back garden through this spring and summer.

April

I didn't have the idea of doing the panoramas at first, so the mid-April pictures are actually two sets that didn't overlap enough to allow them to be stitched together.

Mid April left side of hill

Mid April right side of hill

The early daffodils really stand out against the red mulch.

Late April

Beginning to see where the bigger elements of the garden are returning to the spring garden.

May

Mid May

Beginning to see the Azaleas in the center show their color.

Late May

By late May there has been a lot of growth and filling in, even the vegetable garden on the far right is showing growth.

June

Mid June

In June we started seeing the Primrose and the Rose Campion - bunches of yellow and pinkish red.

Late June

July

Mid July

By mid July we were seeing a LOT of the green spikey plants all over, but particularly in the center - blocking our view of the butterfly bushes..

Late July

I made a decision that the green spikey things were weeds - they were taking over and growing so big that we couldn't see much else. - except the mutant tomato bushes taking over the vegetable garden.  There are only 3 tomato bushes in that garden over there on the right.

August

Mid August

It was a very mild August, very few days in the 90's and none that I can remember in the 100's. Everything continued to thrive, but we don't have much blossoming out back in the late summer.  We had a very healthy hibiscus in the front yard, but those pictures are in other posts.

Late August

August has continued mild (a little hot this week, but nothing to complain about.) The mutatnt tomato plants are still going strong - we're getting between a pint and a quart of cherry tomatoes almost every day.

September and October

There will still be plenty to do and more tomatoes to harvest, but the major flowering and gardening for this season is winding down.  I'm already making plans for next year, but this project has given me a longer perspective on the cycles of the garden through the Spring and Summer months.  I need to find some more late blooming plants o help fill out all the greenery of August and September.

Harvesting the goodness

We started a project earlier this summer - a vegetable garden.  I put in a 4'x4' raised bed for vegetables.  The bottom half of the soil is simple top soil. The top half is Miracle-Grow vegetable soil.  That mix has really worked, and I've gotten to combine my new found passion for the garden with my longstanding love of food and food related activity.

In other word - the garden has exploded.

It started out with what we thought would be a modest mix of tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, and a pepper plant.  (The pepper plant [front left plant above] has disappeared - hasn't been seen in months - totally overwhelmed by sun stealing neighbors.)

Now we have:

The lettuce have been eaten and we are almost done with the zucchini and cucumbers.  But as the heat of summer is developing, so are the tomatoes.

But first a few memories of the cooler days.

We've had vegetables fresher than anything we could ever find, even at the farmers markets or road side stands we've been visiting for years. It's been a challenge to live up to the freshness of the ingredients and find ways to prepare them.  I will admit that this summer I have started munching on raw cucumbers, just cutting some up with a sandwich or burger/hot dog.

But the heat of August is here, and the tomatoes have arrived.

These will be ready in the next week or two.  Right now we are getting cherry tomatoes and some of the earlier ripe varietals.

And just today my wife went out and came back with this bowl of beauty.

I don't know how we're going to tackle it yet - but we'll try to rise to the challenge.

June 29 panorama

I am continuing my project of taking panorama shots of the back garden at the turn of the month and at the middle.  Since June is ending on a Monday. I went out and took the pictures today.  I spent yesterday working on the vegetable garden, taking off the bird netting and putting in supports for the plants. Today I did some weeding, so the garden was ready to have it's picture taken.

TaDa:

I was talking to our neighbor, Pat, last night (we had her over for a barbecue) and she said she doesn't remember a summer when the plants got so big.  So these pictures may not be typical, but they do document the stages of growth and change through the summer. At the end of the summer I am going to put together a couple collages showing the development of the garden and print them off on photo paper and put them into my garden notebook.  So I'll have a record of the garden (as it is this year) and what blooms when and where in the garden. 

As I mentioned, yesterday we took the bird netting off the vegetable garden.  The tomatoes and cucumbers were growing through it, so we figured it would be more a hindrance to us being able to harvest anything than effective protection from the birds.  (We've already started getting zucchini, and cucumbers, and the lettuce is done for the season.  Tomatoes are very close.)

So, I was saying (twice now) we took down the bird netting.  What I didn't realize was how much the plants were using the netting for support.  Once I had the netting free, everything fell over.

That's a big pile of tomato and cucumber plants that's too heavy to support itself.

A trip to Lowes and a couple hours later we have this:

It wasn't quite the plans I had for the afternoon, but now the tomatoes and cucumbers are supported and have more room to grow.  We can also see and reach the tomato plants on the inside of the box. We found another ripe zucchini and Gloria made zucchini tots to go with the grilled chicken and pasta salad for dinner.

Now I'm just hoping that the raised bed is high enough to be out of reach of the bunnies.

I put the snow shovel away

Enough of THIS:

We had a chance to get beyond basic clean-up of the garden over the weekend.  We’ve been talking (and researching) about different options for a raised garden bed for a few weeks.   In a couple of the places we’re lived, I’ve build garden beds for Gloria to plant flowers or vegetables.  Last spring we got a couple of big planters for the patio (a ½ whiskey barrel and other pot just a little smaller,) but this year we wanted to go bigger.  But we also wanted something high off the ground that would be easy to tend.

I’ve looked at plans for DIY beds and at kits available from local sources.  I wasn’t sure about the DIY options because I didn’t know how we would be able to get the lumber home so that I could start working on it.  Not to mention that the scratch built boxes are a lot more work.

So last week, Gloria found a kit at Lowe's that makes a 4 foot by 4 foot by 6 inch raised bed. They’re designed so that they can be stacked. We were out most of the day Saturday, but after we got home and took care of the kids, we went up and picked up 4 kits. So I had the makings of a box 4’ x 4’ x 24 inches.

Sunday’s project was putting it together. It was pretty easy and went together quickly. It was also nice that the corners are designed with a spike that anchor it into the ground and serve to lock the upper layers together.

½ way up

The completed box

Then it was time to add the dirt.

This is most of it, I had to go back and get 3 more bags of garden soil.  It totaled to 30 cubic feet of dirt. I had 12 cubic feet of plain topsoil and 18 cubic feet of flower and vegetable garden soil. 

The bird seed was also in the Rav and had to be unloaded. I left it up there for the picture figuring on making a comment like:

I wonder what I'll get from these seeds?

I did a little research this morning and it came in somewhere around 2600 pounds of dirt.  I put in over 1 ¼ tons of dirt yesterday.  The research was after taking a couple extra strength Tylenol.

But now it’s ready for planting.

Gloria has already picked out a selection of bedding plants to go in there and in the two planters from last year.  She has 3 kinds of tomatoes, 4 bell pepper plants, some romaine lettuce, a rosemary plant, and some basil. (There might be something else, but I can’t remember all the specifics from as far back as Saturday, it was a long weekend.)

While I was working on the new garden bed, Gloria was cleaning and putting preservative on the patio furniture.

They've gotten a "weathered" look that we're trying to recover from.

I did take a break after the box was built and started working on dinner. I butterflied a whole chicken. I made a rub of pesto and some roasted red pepper sauce we had and rubbed it under the skin of the chicken. I put it back in the refrigerator for a couple of hours while I filled up the garden box with dirt. Gloria made our springtime favorite salad – asparagus and tomatoes. We had some pasta salad and I decided to cut up a pineapple and grill some spears since I had the grill hot.

I got the chicken going and we got ready for our neighbor to join us.

On Saturday we had gotten some new wines form our friends at Far Eastern Shore Winery http://www.fareasternshorewinery.com/ . They have two new wines, Lotus and Dragonfly.

We approve of the new wines. J  We actually went through 3 bottles while we were relaxing from our toils of the day.  I think that had something to do with my not being too sore when I went to bed last night.

Well, dinner was relaxed with fun company and a feeling of accomplishment after a busy weekend.

I still have work to do in the front yard, and I need to put mulch down on the back garden.  But, I put the snow shovels away in the shed and we’re moving on to Spring.  (The final confirmation will be the cherry blossoms in the back yard.  They’re budding now and should be out within a week or two.)