It snowed overnight, the skies are gray and the temps are in the upper 30's. Not a great day to work outside but nice for planning and dreaming.
Gardening and yard work became much more fun once we decided to reduce the amount of lawn we have and add raised beds. However, I have been too busy with school to really use our gardens to their full potential. This summer will be my first in a while without homework so I am planning on really having fun with gardening. We especially enjoy growing fruit and vegetables. Here are the areas we have to work with. I hope to report much tasty success with this years projects: The Fenceline Garden: Has wild blue lupine, lovage, red currants, black currants, blueberries, raspberries, ground cherries and rhubarb. With a little luck I will get some butterfly weed to survive and thrive next to the lupine plants. I also plan to add some coral honeysuckle.
The Triangle Garden: is new and will have raspberries planted along with miscellaneous vegetables.
The sunny part of the 4 Tree Garden has elderberries, raspberries, lovage and horseradish and I will plant swiss chard. The rest will be ferns and other shade lovers.
The Postage Stamp behind the deck has hollyhocks, bee balm and false dragonhead.
The middle of the yard is our raised bed gardens. The blue squares and rectangles represent what we already have. The purple shapes are on my “dream list”. I’m told by my builder/husband that they will appear late this summer or next year.
The diagram is a little rough and not to scale but it gives some idea of what we are working with. We also have 2 garden areas in our front yard. Overall, we don’t have a lot of space to work with but it is not bad for an in town property I guess. I can’t wait to post the tally of this years crops. The hardest areas to work with have been the shady spots. They still need work but have been a nice cool place to escape to during a warm day of yard work.
5 comments:
Neat diagram! Did you use some kind of program to make it? It helps me to picture your place better. Someday you should post a photo from the end your backyard, looking towards the house.
I have some shady spots under the pines that I am hoping to develop...there are so many cool shade plants! I check out shade garden books from the library and dream.
Wow, sounds and looks great. You must have been working on your plans for a while now.
My hubby just planned tomatoes, peppers, squash, basil, parsley, cilantro, 4-o'clocks & morning glories. He's starting the seeds in the house and will move everything outside to our portable greenhouse when the weather warms up.
I can't wait for planting time! Just being outside in the garden is a real thrill.
Forgot to mention shade = hostas! There are so many varieties of hostas and they are maintenance free plants. We have over 100 varieties in our shady yard and we love hostas.
Connie- I did the plan in powerpoint. There are better ways I could have done it but I would have to take time to learn something else and I'm in powerpoint all the time anyway working on presentations. Now I'm working on my plans for the square foot gardens.
I hope to post a photo looking towards the house. Before I do that, I'm waiting for dear hubby to put away some things he stores behind the house over winter. He usually does that at the end of April.
Tainterturtles- I can't wait for planting time either! I just started tomatoes, peppers and herbs. It is fun to get some things done even though it is too early to get outside much.
I am excited to see your garden and yields this year! Your fence-line garden sounds like a wonderful area. We are gradually adding to our plants and our garden spaces...the less mowing, the better.
I hope to make a large increase in growing space this year -- before I have to start doing some time consuming work at a "job".
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