Hi all, We are renting a small place with no room or permission for a garden so this year we decided to do something about it and found a garden through this site: https://www.sharingbackyards.com/ The land is owned by someone who can't use it for some reason and would like someone else to use the space. In our case, the garden is quite a sizable area.
Here is a picture of the garden when we first went to look at it. We live in a zone 3/4 area and this was taken at the beginning of May View attachment 1616
These were taken on May 20th after a long weekend of digging and planting seed in the rain. It rained very heavily and there is extensive flooding around town. Things are a wee bit muddy right now... The garden is basically a double keyhole raised bed system. The driveway runs along the Northern side. View attachment 1621 I'm using runoff from the right of way to irrigate my garden beds View attachment 1620 Here is the same angle as the original: View attachment 1622
So far we've planted: Sunflowers Sweetcorn and Popcorn Snowpeas, Bush Beans, Red Kidney Beans, Black Beans, Fava Beans Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower Lettuce, Spinach, Swiss Chard Carrots, Multi-colored Carrots, Parsnips, Radishes, Beets Leeks, Chives Red Peppers, Thai Chili Tomatoes Cucumbers, Zucchini, Squash Dill, Oregano, Rosemary, Basil, Italian Parsley Einkorn Wheat, Pacific Blue Stem Wheat Hana Barley, Golden Promise Barley In a few weeks we'll be planting: Beans under the corn and sunflowers Comfrey, Borage, Lovage, Sorrel, Marigold, Echinacea, Wormwood (borders)
What a wonderful idea. I had heard of this but you are the first person that I've seen actually do it. Hope it goes well, looks really good so far.
Here is a footprint of the garden I made on the computer as the photos don't really show the layout all that well: View attachment 1623 This is how it turned out. It wasn't how I originally planned it. It turned out that the area isn't as rectangular as I originally thought and I paced out two sides of the "rectangle", assuming 1 meter per pace for my initial measurements. Here is my original plan: View attachment 1624 As you can see, there was some improvisation necessary
As the garden has steep slopes, so there is a sunny and shady side to every bed. In order to help with the planting plan, I added some contours: View attachment 1625 Then I added some planting regions: View attachment 1626 It was pouring with rain, there were two of us planting, and we had two small children creating chaos... Needless to say, we forgot where we planted everything. Anyway, I filled in the blanks as best I could but the scanned image is too big to post in this forum. While I was digging, the old lady next door came out to see what all the earth moving was all about. I explained why I was going to all this trouble to put in the garden and the benefits of such a design. By the look of sympathy on her face, I suspect she thinks I'm a few sandwiches short of a picnic LOL. The land owner also came out briefly to check that I wasn't burying a body or two...
Won't it be nice to be able to give the neighbour a few tomatoes to go in that sandwich with a smile on your face in a few months....
We're still getting frosts here and the seedlings will be popping up shortly so this weekend I laid down some dried grass clippings as mulch to protect them as well as the soil. View attachment 1649 View attachment 1650
Well I went to the garden today to turn the compost and found that the wind had blown a lot of the mulch away. So I had to reapply it and wet it down again. We have 3 days of rain on the way so hopefully it'll stay put this time. The wheat and barley are up, but that is all. It's 10 days in and I would have expected a bit more activity...