Skip to the 2003 growing season -- no pictures yet, but details about the best gardening year so far for me!

Planted by me

The first garden area, approx. six by six foot, fenced in w/4-foot-high fencing. Dianthus and Bee Balm took off in there first.

List of things I'd like to plant...with lots of planting info. Sorted by family, if I knew it, species if not, and by common name if I knew neither of them.

These are some of my young current bushes:

currents, summer or early fall 2002, prior to mulching

There's also the garden "downstairs"--down towards the brook. I have another bed and a half there, and a clump of chives. The peas down there were the success story of early 2002 (even with leeks growing next to them). The horehound down there (and, to a lesser extent, the hyssop next to it) was the highlight for the later part of the 2002 season, in terms of actual harvesting. (Of course, the wild black raspberries are THE best thing that grows on my property--I was just talking about things I planted.)

2003 growing season

I'm too busy in the garden to write much about it! I'm keeping a notebook with everything I plant. I'm having a better track record so far with plant survival, and I'm learning all the latin names--something I never thought I'd do (just like sysadminning, haha). Why am I learning them now? I've learned that the families of plants ARE important to understand--esp for companion planting, which I try to do. (I'm trying to plant by the moon, too, mostly. By keeping track, I'll be able to see if it makes any difference. :-)

I've found the county's free compost. (TAANSTAFC?) I've shoveled and trucked and shoveled a half-dozen loads of 300-500 lbs each, in my Jeep. They also have straw there sometimes. I have all the leaves I need from the two truckloads the town dropped off last fall. They are in a wonderful state for mulching now. Pat, the neighbor, has a huge pile of used straw, too, if I wanted to head over there. I got one load from him late April, for one of the beds. I'll head back in the fall for more, I think.

Thanks to this organic material, and inspiration from 1) Ruth Stout and 2) Patricia Lanza's Lasagna Gardening book, I have been able to greatly multiply the number of beds on the property. I have 19 acres, so it's not a matter of space or sun (almost 3/4s is full sun). It's about preparing beds, and keeping what you plant 1) alive, and 2) from getting eaten by something other than you. It's abandoned farmland, with 4-6 inches of sod, chock-full of ROOTS--which are much worse than the rocks in this area, if you ask me. I just have a shovel--not a plow. A plow (but not a rototiller--that's NO good for my carpel tunnel) MIGHT change my mind--but I think these ladies have shown me a better way than digging down: building up. My basic bed consists of leaves as a base, and then compost, and then leaves to mulch the plants. In all--enough to cover the monster weeds. The ones that come through are weak and easily-pulled, just like Patricia Lazno promised. I have a bunch of bindweed popping their sturdy tips up all over the place, but that's one of very few that come through in great number. The madder just comes through if I haven't mulched well enough to begin with, I get some milkweed here and there, also. (Wild blackberries, too, and they are huge, but they are nowhere near as numerous as the bindweed.) I have a few other variations of bed composition, including a tomato bed that got a HUGE load of cow manure last fall, also from Pat (without the straw mixed it). See the mushrooms page for a picture of the big white Leucoagaricus that grew in the middle of it back then! Later in the fall (2002), Mom and Dad came up. While Dad helped with the stairs for the yurt, Mom hauled leaves in the wheelbarrow for the base of many of the current beds.

I've been able to find more fencing, for about half of the beds, which is required for many types of plants around here. So, I'm having a greater percentage of things live this year. Although, all I've harvested so far (2nd week of June) is some lettuce, mesclum and chives, which aren't fenced in, and oregano and thyme, which are. The wild strawberries have set fruit, but it's still green. The wild blackberries are in flower; haven't checked the wild black raspberries yet.

Itemizing the beds:

dimensions sq ft early 2003 contents (holes later in season will be filled with later plantings)

3 8 24 beans (mung, green), peppers, peas; maybe an eggplant will live?

3.5 8.5 29.75 tomatoes, black beans, red cabbage, chick peas.

2.5 5 12.5 peas, roquette, daisies

3.5 3 10.5 rutabagas and a few carrots; peas along one edge

6 5 30 original square bed, with dianthus, monarda, herbs and now two tomato plants and some sorrel

3 12.5 37.5 a double 6.5' row of buttercrunch, plus mesclun, garlic, and sage; row of tarragon didn't sprout

7.5 11 82.5 sweet corn interplanted with one row of spinach and two of runner beans; some flax if it comes up; squash (spaghetti and acorn), coles and onions

7 10 70 curcurbit patch! cukes, spaghetti, cantelope, and acorn; onions along one end

5.25 7.5 39.375 coles (red, wong bok and collards), 2 peppers; maybe one eggplant will live

7 2.67 18.69 sunflowers, northern beans, acorn squash

2 3 6 some wild strawberries, mulched with straw

9 8 72 new square bed: carrots, parsnips, rutabagas and turnips, if they grow; some onions, saponeria

3 8 24 peas, a few beets, green onions (down below)

3 4 12 horehound, hyssop (down below)

2 chives (down below)

4 my mint outcroppings: chocolate, peppermint, spearmint, and apple mint so far

14 elderberries, hazelnuts, currents, blueberries, cranberries--approx

488.815 total square footage under cultivation (does not include paths)

There's also a bed (shipping paper, then straw) that I planted a whole lot of potatoes in, but it got too wet, and only one's come up so far. I threw in some sweet potato pieces, and I'll see what comes of them.

July 2003

The potatoes ended up coming up after all... plenty of them, but I couldn't find enough straw to mulch them with, so the yields won't be as great as they could have been. The peas did OK, the green beans are doing great. The acorn squash took off, and the tomatoes should produce well. No more lettuce, and the mesclun came up mostly mustard greens that were really too bitter to eat. The borage grew very well, but the plant is just too wierd and prickley to eat, unless you take just the flowers and not the stems or nearby buds. (Maybe flower fritters will work for the whole tops, hiding the prickles?) The wild black raspberries were of course delicious. Hardy and I sampled the very first ones on the 13th, along with the end of the wild strawberries--yum! Twoweeks later, we had some of the last black raspberries. I've got some container parts for some more beds for next year: 45 by 31 inches, times six.