More views of our garden

When we first put in the north garden it felt like it stuck way out into the yard. Dawn wanted to bring some of the plantings in front of the house forward to tie everything together and make it not feel so stark. So she designed and built, with the help of Ben's mom, aunts and sister, this deer resistant garden across the front. Dawn ordered a deer resistant pre-planned garden but then ignored the planting guide that came with it and did her own thing with the plants... So far the deer haven't eaten anything except for some geranium and some poppy leaves. We put down soaker hose around the plants and then mulched with red oak.

This is a shot of the north garden taken from the southeast corner looking in. That's our big, untamed pile of mulch in the foreground from our great brush chipping adventure. As you can see, we've been putting that in between our beds as well.

The fence is actually comprised of two parts. Along the bottom, we bent 2' coated chicken wire into an 'L' shape and buried it so that it's 2" underground and sticking out away from the garden. This will thwart any digging critters like rabbits or woodchucks. We then put 4' garden fence in front of that and left the top 12" unsecured. That should help keep out any climbing critters like raccoon or woodchucks. Of course, a 4' fence isn't much of a barrier to the true garden nemesis in our neighborhood, the whitetail deer. However, our hope was that, with all of the boxes and the hoops in the way, deer wouldn't see a safe spot to land and so they wouldn't try it. We've also put in containers of lavender and sweet mint to confuse their sense of smell and, so far, that all has seemed to keep them away. There's one deer out munching next to our garden every day and we swear she's working out how she's getting in, but so far we've been safe.

The hoops on the beds remind us of prairie schooners.... yes, we're that nerdy. Ben's sister bent all of these hoops for us and then helped put them in. We secured them inside each box with pipe straps and galvanized nails. Overkill? Probably... but they aren't going anywhere.

We put an awesome planter on the deck that Ben and his Dad built. You can see it bursting with lettuce here and a container tomato swinging away in the background.

Here's a fuller shot of the planter on the deck. It's 18" deep, 12' long, and the box part is 10" high. The bottom is landscape fabric and coated chicken wire. It took Ben, his dad and his uncle to get it on the deck. It's not going anywhere ;) Those empty boxes were supposed to get lettuce but time got away from us and it's hot now. So, maybe some shorter carrots?

The previous owners had a rock garden behind the garage. We thought it'd be great to make into an herb garden instead. Due to an untimely asparagus purchase and better than expected results with the first thing we ever planted, parsley, it's mostly just the asparagus and parsley bed now. There are some garlic chives and lovage in there as well, but it's mostly parsley :) We have one bare spot that'll probably get more basil or maybe some rosemary.

Once we built our terraced garden on the south side, Dawn thought we should put some more planters on the back side as we had lots of lumber and a fair amount of space left. Since her strawberries really needed a home, that seemed like an excellent idea. The look isn't quite as polished as if we had designed it in from the start, but it turned out well. We still need to put some hinged covers with screens over these beds. The screens will keep the birds out of our berries.

Ben figured out that the back hill could use some... wait for it... more lumber and dirt. So we put these boxes in with a little walkway between them and the strawberry beds. The front bed has lemon basil and sweet basil, jalapeno peppers and oregano. The back box has strawberries and onions.

Here's a quick view of the terraced south garden from the southwest corner.

And straight on from the south so you can soak it all in ;) The foreground bed was our most recent addition after Dawn noticed we still had lumber and dirt left. So, why not build another bed...

The foreground, smallish box, is tomatoes and basil. Behind that is our melon patch. There are some cantaloupe, watermelon and some sort of fancy french melon. Directly behind that are carrots, broccoli, cabbage and cheddar cauliflower. Behind that are peppers and eggplant. Then, where you see most of the cages, are tomatoes and basil.... finally, to top of the terrace, are pole beans cucumbers (slicers and pickling) and two zucchini.... whew, that was tiring.

We had row cover over the broccoli bed. It blew off in a violent wind the same night we put it up. We were lazy and never put more up. So, today Dawn spent way too much time picking just-hatched caterpillars and eggs off the leaves. Whoever said cabbage moths are only active for the first part of the growing season was wrong... very wrong. Infestation avoided, we have row cover on again.

A strip of raspberries running down the yard. See below for a closeup of one of the plants. They are doing really well so far.

Raspberry

Here's a shot of the tiers from the top. We still need to cut the remaining 4x4's down flush with the beds.

And, here's the rest of the south garden from up by the driveway. The front half of the yard is fenced with 4' garden fence with the chicken wire down low. Five feet behind that, we're putting up a second 4' garden fence. Deer can jump really high or they can jump really far but they can't do both. So, the going theory is that they can't clear a 4'x4' section... we'll see if that holds I guess. So far, so good. The back half of the yard, out of sight of the neighbors, is protected by a 7' deer fence with chicken wire in front of that and draped on the ground.

Of course, we don't want to lose all of that valuable planting space between the two fences and so we've planted tomatoes, sunflowers sweet peppers, basil and bush beans... and we'll probably stuff more potatoes in there this year as well.

Directly under the tree is actually shaded for most of the day. Dawn is going to put a small picnic table there... well, as soon as Ben builds it.

And here's the disaster area. But, behind that, is our three sisters bed. It has corn planted in the hills and squash and pumpkins planted between the hills. Once the corn is up, we'll plant beans in there as well. The idea is that the beans help put nitrogen in the soil for the corn, the corn provides support for the beans, and the squash sprawls out and keeps all the weeds down. Plus the underside of the squash leaves are prickly and raccoon don't like crawling through that to get to the corn.

Anyway, that's the garden so far. We wanted to get it spruced up before we posted more photos, but at the rate we're going, that'll be sometime mid-winter!