Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden -3

Layout of a vegetable garden, type, shape and size of raised beds, type of mulch around them, support for climbing plants, containers for growing vegetables, ways to make vegetable gardens not only practical but also attractive and other aspects of vegetable gardening - this is what "Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden" is about.

These three pictures prove that wooden boxes for growing vegetables can be attractive elements not only in a garden itself but on a deck too.


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Wooden half-barrels, as in the next picture, make good vegetable planters. Miniature (compact, midget, dwarf) varieties of many types of vegetables are available nowdays (see a list of them here). Good information about growing veggies in containers can be found here .

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Thick bamboo stakes are used to make a TeePee in this garden. Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden-2 has more pictures with different types of supports for climbing plants .
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Below, there are vegetable gardens in Alaska belonging to the members of the Homer Garden Club. My hat is off to you, the northenmost gardeners in the U.S.!

I've never seen potatoes growing on a terraced slope:
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I noticed Nasturtiums as companion plants interplanted with vegetables in many gardens in Homer. I use nasturtiums in my vegetable garden too. Mine spread wildly, and need to be pinched to prevent them from taking over the whole garden. I might switch to more compact varieties of nasturtiums.
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I use yellow, orange and red nasturtium flowers in salads and for decorating plates.
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I always watch what is used as mulch in a garden especially around raised beds. Gravel? Wood (bark nuggets, chips)? Any mulch will help to prevent soil erosion and moisture loss, supress weeds, cool or warm the soil and encourage the worm population. What is your favorite material? Do you always put it 3 inches (7 1/2 cm) deep as they recommend?

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In one of the gardens shown here, they use small river rocks and crushed rock. I like such a look. Gravel and rock seem to be more practical on slopes since they are not washed away as easily as wood mulch. I also like hay/straw as mulch, although they decompost fast and need to be replenished often. Saying that, I should admit that I stopped using it after one of my neighbors expressed a concern about straw attracting mice. It's true, rodents love this material as well as slugs which we have here, in the Pacific Northwest, in abundance. But, it was not them who turned me away from straw mulch but garden snakes. I have them in my garden anyway, but I don't like to step on them after they have found a refuge under hay or straw.
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Some pros and cons of different types of mulches can be found here.
In the next picture - supporting raised beds with boards which are not made into frames. It should be convenient for changing the size and configurations of the beds.
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Wooden boards for practicality, plates for decoration - nice, nice, nice:

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If in Homer, Alaska, a moose is often a garden visitor, in Washington state, a deer should be kept from the gardens. A fence is the most reliable way to do it:
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It is expected for a vegetable garden belonging to a designer to be ... well, artistic!
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Jody's husband made these raised beds based on her own design.
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Below is the most decorative peas' support which I've ever seen:
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The following two pictures are from Peggy's garden. She, by the way, also has an exquisite flower garden deserving to be featured in a separate post.
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I love the mosaic urn in the middle of the bed. It can be seen in the picture in the very first "Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden". "
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I hope these pictures from the gardens generously opened to the public by their owners can help you make some decisions regarding your own gardens. There are numerous articles on the Internet about vegetable gardening. But sometimes seeing real gardens of ordinary people help us a great deal, don't you think so?

Previous posts are here: Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden , Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden-2.
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***Copyright 2011 TatyanaS

January White and Reds

I wanted some snow. I got it. It came in the evening and was gone by the next night.

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Streaks of falling snow can be seen in this picture:

While white was the color that excited me outside, red is the color which excited me inside.

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The Amaryllis flowers are not very big but the dark velvety color is asking to be called royal, dramatic and even poignant. It looks much lighter in the picture.
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Do you remember the Apple Blossom Amaryllis from my Ugly Duckling Amaryllis Story? Its bulb took a month-long break and now has new leaves coming. Wouldn't it be neat if it rebloomed? No? Never say never! But even narrow long and flat green leaves make, on their own, a nice sight in a house in winter, don't you think so? I even love the bulbs themselves! It is said that Amaryllis is cultivated for its beautiful and colorful flowers. But, just look at these huge, roughly textured beauties:
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When I look at these bulbs, I think about the power, energy and promise hidden in them! Isn't it amazing that an Amaryllis bulb is able to produce blooms for up to 75 years! Do you move your Amaryllis bulbs to the garden for summer and let them grow there before the next holiday season?
This year, instead of a poinsettia, we bought an arrangement of live plants which I plan to transfer to my garden in spring.

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Poinsettia, cyclamens, variegated ivy and .... can anyone remind me of the name of the little evergreens with light edges? This planter came from Canada's Rainbow Greenhouses. Thank you Canadian friends!

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I see three seasons in this picture: the lonely leaf is left from the autumn, the snow tells 'winter' and the light piece of the sky symbolises the spring. Spring is only around the corner.

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P.S. The third part of Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden is coming sooon!

Copyright 2011 TatyanaS

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

Using Raised Beds in Winter. Part 1

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New Year - New Soil!

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I am having an experiment with my kitchen garden.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention.
Necessity: To make more compost faster.
I needed an additional place to make compost. I have a composter and a compost pile. The composter works well, but it is slow since I forget to rotate it as often as needed. The compost pile also provides my garden with nice compost but, again, it is slow because it has only one compartment.

Invention (it's not a real invention, of course, but it's a new thing for me and my garden): Preparing compost in raised beds before the new growing season. I don't have a place for a new compost pile. Why not use the raised bed space?
The only plant which now grows in one of those beds is parsley. Two and a half beds have nothing except soil. Part of that soil I spread around the perennials, so the beds have a lot of space in them.

Three raised beds as seen in July 2010
So, I dump vegetable and fruit peels, egg shells, shredded cardboard, newspapers and other green and brown material which used to go to the compost pile. Diversity of organic matter is important for the soil quality. I even added some composted horse/chicken manure mix (just a bit)!
I mix every new portion with soil and hope to have nice planting mix by the time of spring planting.
My intention is to stop digging, turning and otherwise disturbing the soil in the raised beds after they get full and there is no more space for new additions.
It won't be too long since we have a lot of kitchen waste, leaves and other ingredients for compost. I hope there will be enough time for microbes, eathworms, nematodes and other live organisms to breed there and work on soil improvement. Almost forgot: I plan to cover beds with dry leaves. I read that it's better than to incorporate them deep into the soil. Live organisms will do that themselves by slowly consuming the leaves and enriching the soil with their residues.
How did I get this idea? Last October I went deep into the woods separating a golf course from a road.

I wanted to take a picture of the autumn trees framing the course.

These are the two pictures which I took standing on the soft forest floor

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It was not easy to walk between the trees. My feet sunk deep into the soft soil. I took a picture and on the way back to the car stopped and looked down. Then, I grabbed a handful of stuff under my feet. Do you know what it was? A layer of leaves, needles, pieces of branches, etc. I dug deeper and under it I saw black gold: dark, humus-rich soil. The dream of every gardener. Nature created a perfect mix from whatever fell on the ground. And what could it be? The above mentioned leaves, needles and twigs, plus pine cones, seeds and seedpods, berries, grass, animal fur and matter, dead insects, bird feathers, remains of fallen tree trunks... you name it! Nobody put any store-bought soil mixtures in that place, nobody dug, turned and otherwise cultivated that soil. Can I imitate what nature does? Of course not. But, I can at least try to use whatever materials I have to get better soil for my garden.

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Unloading compost from a composter.

Kitchen garden is seen in the upper right part of the picture

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I am not sure that this method will result in the perfect soil. But I hope that it'll be better than the mixtures which I used to buy in stores and which turn to brown dust after just one season.

Any suggestions? How do you use your raised beds in winter?
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Here's to a year of great soil in your garden!

Part 2 is here: Using raised beds in winter. Part 2

***Copyright 2010 TatyanaS