Welcome to Wednesday Street Prophets open thread. Come in, pull up a lawn chair and tell us how your garden grows!
Front porch entry.
In my post last month
(Kill Your Lawn), I described how I occupied my front yard with five large raised beds to turn it into my own family food system. This year, my yard has been chosen by the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition for the Edible Front Yard Walking Tour, so I have been busy getting ready for that. As my husband says, weeks of hard labor for a 15 minute event!
Ordinarily, I ignore the esthetics of my front porch; however, the impending tour led me to paint my wicker. It is an evening tour, so the nicotiana will be perfuming the air.
The tomatoes are the queens of the garden as always. The north bed gets the most sun. I cover crop this bed in crimson clover during the winter, so the soil is excellent.
This bed is new this year. The original strawberries became shot through with weeds, so I removed the soil and replaced it.
New bed this year, planted with peppers, summer squash and cantaloupes.
I was very happy to find pepper plants which look like I planted them weeks ago.
Sweet bell peppers.
I love cucumbers so I have a lot of them. I planted them behind the tomatoes and have trained them vertically so they can seek the sun.
Cukes!
We love beans, so I have both pole and bush beans, yellow, green and purple. I discovered I have a deer problem and have covered them with bird netting which will be easy to lift to harvest and yet deter any grazing.
I have them strung up in free form fashion like a spider on LSD.
I have about two dozen different vegetables planted this year. In this bed, I will have my fall/winter/spring garden. I've planted overwintering carrots and will plant collards as the lettuce comes out. I've planted broccoli which should overwinter. I also planted some ground cherries (tomato family) in honor of my mother who always planted them.
Lemongrass, basil, broccoli, ground cherries and little cabbages.
We have two Asian Pear trees out front which have given us over twenty years of fruit.
I need to get out here and thin the fruit!
The asparagus bed is doing well!
My daughter's first truck which I use as a greenhouse, tool storage area and heat sink for blueberries and tomatoes.
So, how does your garden grow?