02 February 2013

My Gardens

I recently moved and I want to replicate my gardens that I worked so hard on at my old house. Here are a couple pictures of them.


 My Flower Beds:



 When I started this project, This was a poor spot. Covered by two very large pine trees that littered the front yard with pine needles, pine cones and twigs.



I dug the ground up after I raked it well to remove the mess from the trees. Dug down about a foot deep. I shook the sod out of the grass and discarded it. I also had a lot of roots to cut out.  


I then took dried sticks from the field behind my house that were about 2 inches in diameter and cut them 8 to 12 inches in length.  I wanted it to look rustic!



From there, I pounded them into the ground around the edges so that they were touching.  


I started with longer ones in the center and moved outward making them lower as I went. Just a little so that you could see the ramping affect of them gong downwards. 


I then put the dirt tight up against them and tamped it so that it would hold them in place.
 I then filled it with good naturally fertilized soil and evened it out. 


I then began adding plants. I had a large variety of flowers and greenery. 



 Hostas filled out the back edge along with wild flowers that I dug out of a field. 



Center Section. This part has a rounded front. 



Full Side View




Right Side of the bed.








Left Side of Bed.













Here are a couple of views.  
  


  Here you can see the hanging plants as well as the planter that I had on the porch.


















































































Here is the Planter that I bought to put on the porch rail.





My Vegetable Gardens:

On to the Vegetable Gardens!   Here I did the same thing as in the previous project.  I started with a spot in the back yard that gets a lot of sun.
\




I dug up the sod, Shook out the soil from the grass and dug it down further.  From there I added some naturally fertilized soil to help the plants to grow.
  In these pictures you can see the tomatoes and Peppers.  I had a full sized beefy type red tomatoe and a smaller tomatoe called a early girl. There were thousands of tomatoes through out the growing season, I couldnt give them away fast enough.


The bushy row in the center are my Radishes. This was the first time I ever grew then and I was quite surprised by the results. They were so easy! They were better then any radish that I ever had in a store. 


I had 20 feet of Radishes. Behind the radishes was the Green beans but I didn't get many because the rabbits found my garden and kept eating the bean plants. This year, I will fence it in. 
 Above you can see the cucumbers, squashes and pumpkins as well as Cantaloup and Watermelons.

In between my plants and around the edges, I planted Onion sets as well.

Here are my Cabbage plants, I ended with 3 or 4 heads off of each plant.


Here we have one of two varieties of Bell Peppers,  I bought Orange peppers and Basic Green Bells  next to them. 



Here you can see that the Radishes are doing great! The cucumbers and flourishing and the squashes not so much. 


The whole garden is doing so good! I can barely contain those tomatoes! 




Cabbages doing great! 

 





Here is one of my bounties!  I spent bout 30 minutes out there pulling weeks and picking some "Candy!"  There is nothing like running out to the garden and picking what you need for your dinner!  A great big salad with a grill steak and Im golden!! It is sooo good!!





I keep finding these all over my property. Not sure if they are good or bad for my gardens but they are everywhere. They are quite beautiful also. The shells are so colorful!



Pictures of my green beans before the Bunnies got them.


Cold Beds

Here is one of the first projects that I would like to work on found this on a blog and I dont remember who's and I cant find the page again.. But here are the directions for it as well.


 Want to build your own? All you need to do is gather:
  • Old wood frame windows
  • Salvage wood 1 x 12. We used cedar, but any scrap wood would do.
  • Nails or screws
  • 2 metal hinges for  each frame
  • Hammer or screwdriver
  • Saw

        The bases were made out of some salvage cedar 1" x 12" that we had. He measured the windows and the built the boxes to those dimensions. The backs were the full 1" x 12", the sides cut on an angle so that one end was 12" and tapered down to 10", and the fronts were cut down to 1" x 10". The 2" slope from front to back makes it easier for the rain to run off.




The Beginning.....

I am starting this blog to showcase my love for the Country. I love gardening and the outdoors. I have many "TO DO!" things I want to do. I plan on posting them here as well as all the things that I have done in my gardens.  I have tons of ideas for my new place!!