Main Garden ....

Well, my computer or blogger (or both) were not liking how many pictures I had so here is the second half of my garden tour. In the post below you'll find the rest of my edible wonders.

My main garden started out as a raised bed. Then we got sod. Now it's not raised any more. Once it freezes and the garden is mostly caput' I will raise it a few inches again. We'll add a new layer of timbers and a new layer of compost and cow manure. By spring planting in late February/early March it will be a raised bed once again. It's separated by timbers into 7 planters.

Since I left my last post on on the playground side of the house we'll start on that side of the main garden. Strawberry plants and a struggling to recover from the freeze Key Lime. It's not really recovering well enough. If we get a hard freeze this year it will have to come out. Probably to be replaced by a Persian lime.

Next to that is the cucumber patch. In here is also my teeny baby broccoli, a small Jackpot Zucchini and a square of carrots and one of cilantro that are both refusing to germinate.

There is a grapefruit tree in a small section missing. there is room for a cabbage in front of it and behind it that will be seeded very soon!

Just on the other side of the grapefruit section is the Okra:

Before you freak out that I planted them too closely this started as 7 plants in 6' of space. the plants are propagating. Each plant has a few 3-4' suckers that are also now producing okra. Smaller, softer, less fibrous - dare I say....better okra! The largest plant has been left with 2 okra that are now 8" to seed save for next year.

And on the other side of the okra is my bean patch. There is a pathetic little cucumber in a cage there. I can't stand to rip it out as it always seems to have at least 2 cukes. But, the new cukes are hell bent on world domination so this old one - it will be gone by Labor Day.

Beans in here: Lima, black turtle

Snap beans in here: Blue Lake, Commodore, Roma, Burgandy and French filet. There are several dozen of each type, all sucession planted. 4 more squares begging to be planted. I'm trying to wait until next week, but with the weather change I'm afraid they won't grow as well so something will be done this weekend. Either a couple zuke that can produce faster or I'll jump full in with the bush beans and be done with it.

From there the fruit tree in the last post with it's 3' section and then this lovely little small sweet pie that I had nursed after accidentally cutting the wrong vine. I get too connected and I couldn't banish it to the trash heap. It had 3 pumpkins on it. That was the end of July. It's now flowering again so there is still a chance for a pie!

This is one I don't even want to post. Any idea what happened? This plant was fine - BEFORE the 2 weeks of rain. The rain killed back most of my cowpeas, and annihilated all the seedlings - and this. It looks like my tomatoes have (3 of 6) I dunno - mutated. Time to do some research here and decide if I need to pull them. I hate to do that because there is no time to start over. NONE of my Nonna's took they were all killed in the monsoons. I'll cry if I have only the 2 little plants on the patio. :-( The 2 plants that have it the worst are beefsteaks.

Next to the maters is my peppers. This beauty is by far my favorite. You can hardly see the lush green foliage for all the peppers on this tabasco plant! The bean trying to climb it will meet it's match this weekend. There are a few little pepper plants i tried to nurse through the summer, but as of yet it is undetermined if they will begin to flourish. A giant bell, a Hungarian, a jalapeno, and a Costa Rican sweet

I apparently also failed to take a picture of my poor onions. I'm down to 7 or 8 of them from twenty. Next year I'll move the bed to a more shaded area. The carrots were on the other side of the onion bed, but were recently pulled to make room for my fall plantings.

That's it. All I've got. I find it every so delightful when people are absouletly awed when they ask what all I grow and I start spouting off so many things. It's amazing that this is allin my landscape. There are no traditional garden plots. No large amounts of land taken to grow these things. And, while right now there is a major lull in the action we do eat entire meals from this yard! Another project I'm going to work on during the winter duldrums - canning. I'm going to learn darn it. I want to be able to preserve all this work. I love eating fresh from the garden, but I'd rather store what I've grown rather than giving it away when it is abundant. Of course the freezer problem does not help...but that is a whole other story.

Till next time~

Barbie