Sprucing Up A Vegetable Garden -2

Sprucing Up A Vegetable Garden has been one of the most popular posts on MySecretGarden blog. It's time to add more great ideas to my collection of beautiful and practical vegetable gardens. I thank all those generous people who opened their gardens and allowed me to take pictures. I take my hat off to them for their creativity, friendliness and willingness to share their ideas with other gardeners.

From the herb bed, above, the brick path leads to the very neat and orderly vegetable garden of Sandy and Arne. I remember spending a lot of time in this garden. There was so much to see and learn!

This was Arne's first attempt to grow tomatoes upside down.

Isn't it a good example of how almost each square inch of ground can be used?

Lifting tomato plants up saves a lot of space! Hanging tomatoes get more warmth than those in the ground, there are very few weeds and a smaller chance to acquire soil borne diseases. Watering can be a problem, but do you see the watering system that Arne created?

Attention: I don't know how the harvest of the hanging tomatoes did from this particular garden. There are a number of sites with information about growing tomatoes upside down. One of the articles is here. If you read the comments to it, you'll see that some people had good results and other people didn't have any success with this method. Of course, we all know that 2010 was not a good tomato year.Weeding is reduced considerably with the use of weed suppressing fabric.

Supports for climbing plants can be folded for out of season storage.

In the picture below, four ways of growing vegetables can be spotted: raised beds, upside down, containers and in the ground.

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The next picture is from Jim's garden. I plan to make support cages for my tomato plants using the same type of reinforcing metal mesh. Plastic protects plants from cold.

The next four pictures show Ernie's vegetable garden. Inexpensive PVC pipes and twine are used here. And, by the way, look at those onions! Onions and tomatoes are companion plants.

I like how Ernie uses the garden shed and twine to provide support for runner beans growing in black plastic containers.

Bamboo stakes, in the pictures above and below, is another type of support. In my garden, I also use bamboo stakes and folding bamboo towers. They are light, easy to move and store, and they look attractive.

Above picture shows Barbara and Jim's vegetable garden

In this beautiful garden of Jeff and Judy, below, wooden frames with metal mesh serve, if I am not mistaken, to support fava beans.

Besides bamboos, look at that great espaliered fruit tree at the house wall!

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Even simple branches can be used to provide support for light-weight plants as in the Monticello vegetable garden:

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The next three pictures show tomato boxes and potting benches made by Nilsen Woodworks:

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Disclaimer: This post is not intended to recommend any of these ways of growing vegetables and herbs. It just illustrates how different people approach vegetable gardening.Best of luck with the gardening approach you elect to use this year!

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Copyright 2010 TatyanaS