A Retrospective

First experiment with raised beds started in 2010. It made for many jokes about graveyards, but it also sure made gardening easier.









Note that this is regular hem-fir. We refused to use treated lumber. (That treatment is poison; we didn't favor growing our family's food in the midst of poison.)








Didn't use cedar because cedar's expensive! And it isn't really suitable for direct burial.










2011 saw the addition of chips between the beds.











Good results in the garden, while we built the greenhouse. Also 2011.









2012:  I doubled the height of the raised beds, added a couple of inches of really dry meadow muffins, and watered the garden. I'll dig it into the dirt later.











2013  saw the demise of the flowering plum that shaded the west end of the garden.

Miss that tree (and that tree house). Used the stump for a fireplace while we burned it out.
















2018: all the wood beds have pretty well rotted by now. We're gradually replacing them with galvanized steel on top of cinder blocks.








This brought the working height up to old-guy range. We had to buy a lot of dirt, which means we had to shovel a lot of dirt, which is awfully good exercise.

Seems to work pretty well.

One bed to go: when the garlic is ready, we'll harvest it and replace the remains of that wood with cinder blocks and galvanized steel, and the upgrades will be done.

The Garden in June

It's June now, and the garden is filling out nicely. It looks full, but there's not much (except salad) that's ready to eat now.

The stock tanks are amazing. Far easier to work with.

There are three avocado trees; no fruit on these yet. The olive and lemons are looking very promising!


The trellis for the peas is getting quite bushy. I'm eager for them to ripen. Kind of a neat entry into the garden.










Herb garden, part one.

That's our picnic table back in there, right behind the basil bed.

Sage on the far end, next to the blueberry bush. That blueberry is doing remarkably poorly this year. Every time it rains, the busted gutter drains a lot of the water on top of the berry; that may be a problem. That's on the honeydo list this year.

This is the second part of the herb garden. The plants in the ground are herbs.

Hanging, we have some herbs, some nasturtiums (spicy!), some tomatoes (not ripe yet), and some cucumbers.


















This is the new patio behind the garage. Making use of the small space.

I was concerned that the pomegranate tree had died. It's coming back. We put the wood on the chain link gate to keep the wind from whipping through there. I think that helped it freeze last winter.

Kiwis growing on the fence, sunflowers up against it. Tomatoes in the hanging pots, more herbs in the pots on the shelf on the fence. 

I've been experimenting with trying to add flowers around the edges. We'll see how that goes. I'll certainly need to water much of that, but it should be worth it.

Inside the greenhouse, things are calmer than earlier in the spring. All the 'maters and squashes are out. The pepper bed is doing well; I have a couple of cucumbers growing around the peppers in there, and a couple of tomatoes in the back.

I'll probably keep starting things far too long into the year. It's just so interesting! Currently, I have four mystery seeds going, and some giant asparagus things from a seed pod I found in a public garden.