Garden picture exchange!

Back in April I posted a picture from this same general spot. Now that it is winter
I am trying to remind myself how things grow. So this was what summer looked
like.

Great pictures! You guys are gonna get people fired up. You have a great sense of aesthetics. I'd show my pictures but they're just not so....... pretty. I think I need to take a photography course.
John S
PDX OR

Alex Ames wrote:Leila Rich please post a a picture of your garden now on the Garden Picture Exchange thread so we can compare
to your previous post. Your runner beans had not run, etc.

A pretty strange summer here. We always have big spring gales, but they're still going, driving people nuts and making life hard for plants. The runners are kind of...jogging...
They're in there somewhere-they'll eventually climb those poles.

The tomatoes look good though. For the umpteenth time, I vote 'jaune flamme' as the tastiest, earliest, orangest tomato
[
this photo's from out the front, which is a very difficult spot: South-facing (Southern hemisphere...) and basically pure sand for miles. Away from the house it's a mix of drought-resistant native and introduced plants, including a fig and globe artichokes.
in the shade, there's some very happy strawberries. There's some white alpine strawberries in there too, which the birds are oblivious to.

We are living at 7500ft, right at the base of a 12000ft mountain. Our seasons are short, and we get 4 or 5 hard hail storms a year. We use the raised beds for our friendly gofer population. We are learning so much every year.

Here is what it looks like today!

The Bears love the apples in the fall.
The garden sleeps tonight!

The bear thinks a food forest is a great idea! Now that would make picking
apples a bit more challenging.

My 20 x 20 community garden plot with 85 feet of hugel bed. This is a new way to garden for me, The mounds are layered with old wood, kelp, compost, soil, and recently composted llama manure. It's just January here in Washington. Everything is "cooking" for spring planting.

Annie I don't know how it will do this first year but it looks great. Stick with it
because it will get better as time goes on.

Pond puddled by our pigs



New hugelkultur beds

Hi there, this is my first post at this nice website.
I got this allotment garden for only this year. As you can see, it was overgrown, wild and not maintained for the last years. I dont like tilling and weeding and it it only for one year, so I am going to try a few strategies for no-till gardening.
One raised bed is covered with biodegradable foil. Tilled and with a layer of manure. Im curious how long and how well it does its job preventing weeds.
The other raised bed is coverd with ordinary plastic woven ground cover. Beneath is tilled soil with a little manure.
The rest will be a very cheap version of sheet mulch, because I dont have any soil to use. First layer is paper. Because the printing company that prints my newspaper strongly advised not to use my old newspapers, I tried to find a alternative. I went to a local printing company and asked them for left overs of rolls with unprinted paper. I got a few and used that as first layer. On top of that I put some half composted stable manure based on sawdust pellets. I got it for free from a local riding club. On top of that goes straw. Bought two old bales that the farmer couldt sell anymore as feed. Im really exited and curious what will give the best result with the least amount of work...

Welcome to permies Timo, the gardens are looking good !

here is my barren looking apple tree guild. added lots of shreaded leaves sticks ans rotting wood to it this winter. the cold north Georgia weather killed off all the lettuce I had in the bed.

What a great walk through all of your gardens. I have three sites that are making the Hugelkultur transition since last year, my frontyard, my landscape staging area I call the shop garden, and a job for a woman wanting a formal garden with Hugelkultur mounds and a series of swales to absorb the moisture on this wet 1/4 acre. Looking forward to green up.

Planting cover crops on these new beds last year was great. Really excited about the potential here!

Love this post! I really enjoyed seeing everyone's pictures (as well as hearing their descriptions)! Seeing all of this green is an excellent antidote to the giant mounds of white surrounding me in Southwest Michigan! I'm inspired so I wanted to share some pictures of my own... turns out I don't have many good wide-shot pictures of the garden - mostly closeups. Here's what I have as far as wider shots go...

We have two main garden spaces. One is a raised bed that is 100' x 2.5' and runs along a property line fence. The other is comprised of raised beds (mostly 12' x 4') inside a 6' fence to keep deer away. Two seasons ago the fenced garden contained 576 square feet of growing space. Last spring we expanded the garden with 576 more square feet of hugelkultur beds. (http://www.arcadia-farms.net/hugelkultur-on-a-micro-farm). I took better pictures the year that the garden was smaller but there are a couple of hugel pics with the expanded garden in here as well.

A few more pictures...

Hi everyone just wanted to join in and post a few pictures of my urban plots. Currently I intensively farm roughly an acre using permaculture principles at 3 different locations. All locations are generously mulched and we dig in wood whenever we can, building underground hugelbeds. Im working on spreadsheets that keep track of our inputs, one of them regarding water usage has shown that over the past 5 years our water usage has only increased %16 even though we have more than doubled our growing space and production. Water retention principles have been in place since 2010 and usage peaked in 2012, we are hoping that 2014's usage continues to decrease just like 2013.

The Garlic bed this morning. It gets so windy here sometimes, we use jute to cover the beds to keep them from getting stripped of mulch. Just starting to build hugel beds, I will post the progress.

i really enjoy this thread =)

its winter here, and snowing!
since i moved last year i am just starting some new beds which are getting weathered in with all the straw/hay/sheet mulch/leaves/recycled bag soil i put in last fall...and even already seeded some hardy stuff to be cold stratified but now everything is covered in snow!
but it will be a while before it really gets going.

here instead...some of last years garden food porn =)

That looks so good.

Wanted to share a pic from today. It's the, "What are you doing?" garden. The swales are definitely working.

This is our front yard, on the left as it was when I moved in, in 2005, and on the right in 2012 after a lot of work.

Here are some shots of my farm

Placeofgathering.com

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/water-is-life-edible-restoration-at-place-of-gathering/x/6015170

Chris Smaglick wrote:Wanted to share a pic from today. It's the, "What are you doing?" garden.

Chris, how on earth did you get the edges so tidy? You're either an artist with a spade, or have gear I don't
I know it's for a client, but it looks kind of surreally perfect!
And what are the mulch/es?

Hi Leila.

It was all done with a shovel and to detail the edge I use my weed eater, keeps the grass back too. In the swales I add a couple inches of wood chips, local tree cutter, and on the mounds we do a light covering of hay and pine straw to allow the clover and other food crops to germinate.

20 years as an architect translated into an artistic ditch digger. Thanks for the interest.

This is my new allotment, I have had it since November last year. The previous occupant was evidently keen on digging (his new plot looks like a ploughed field already). The other plotholders were evidently keen on dumping their rubbish in the hedge to the right. I've removed the rubbish, laid the hedge and returned the years of accumulated composty soil to my plot, because it was drowning the hedge. I'm planting natives in the (north facing) hedge bank (wild garlic, celandine, wild strawberries, work in progress). This may one day be a proper permaculture plot but it will creep in from the edges. I have already put Gaultherias, Rubus spp, Camassia, currants, lavender, asparagus (not sure it will live) and rhubarb round the perimeter. My paths are like no-one else's on the site, they are like two capital Y's with their stems together, so as soon as I reach my plot up the communal path I can walk onto it from the corner and from any point walk straight back into the middle where the compost bins are. For the paths I dug out shallow trenches and filled them with woodchip which I got for free, some from a friend and some from the chipped Christmas trees of the village. Small paths will lead off these main paths to make keyhole beds.

The common ethos on this site seems to be - dig your soil, plant your crop, harvest it, throw any organic debris over the hedge, dig again, optionally cover with fresh horse bedding and manure, wait for the winter rains to leach all the goodness out or hammer the soil lifeless if manure not applied, rotovate and repeat.

Let's see if I can break the mould!

Here is the start of my project. I just built the front beds and starting a large swale on the back side that will allow multiple areas of draining water to be captured. It's a little boring at the moment, but will take pics as things progress.

I live in an HOA, so planning to push the envelope a bit so I can start some form of change. I have a ton of starts (edibles and companions) that will be added over the next few weeks.

Ryan Molpus wrote:Here is the start of my project. I just built the front beds and starting a large swale on the back side that will allow multiple areas of draining water to be captured. It's a little boring at the moment, but will take pics as things progress.

I live in an HOA, so planning to push the envelope a bit so I can start some form of change. I have a ton of starts (edibles and companions) that will be added over the next few weeks.

Ryan - tell me more! What is an HOA? It looks so exciting to me because I haven't heard of most of the things, but it sounds like it will be beautiful and definitely push some envelopes once people realise you are eating your front garden!

Oh wow I want a Honeyberry!

So many beautiful pictures. I should have some pictures to share this year. I am entering year three of my permaculture project. I took pictures of the property when we first moved in. I want to take pictures of the same spots year after year and get feedback from the community. Here are some pics I've taken of plants I have grown since we bought our property.

Chris Smaglick wrote:It's the, "What are you doing?" garden.

This made me laugh so hard!

I can relate.
Ah, neighbors.

I lease 1.5acres in the jungle of north kohala on the big island. The soil is deep and rich and holds lots of water. I collect rare plants and seeds from around he world and grow all my favorite tropical fruits and medicines. I dig big holes and mulch deep. Lots of biochar, IMO's and ferment sprays support health microbe communities and mycelium. Mixed food forest and raised beds with curving paths and nooks.

Looks magical, Peat!

Jennifer, an HOA (Home Owners Association) is a party that represents a community or neighborhood. It's put into place to ensure all Home Owners are following a set of laws to ensure that the neighborhood is being cared for a certain way. This can be good and bad. They restrict certain things, but obviously protect home owners too. For example, I can't have "farm animals" of any type and required to make sure my yard doesn't look like a bomb exploded. So far, so good, but there are always people that have nothing to do in life but to scrutinize every move someone makes.

I tired to incorporate many other things that I can't buy locally. I have my "bread and butter" there too (front, side, and backyard), but I wanted to do something different. Frankly, I have never put a Honeyberry or Seaberry in my mouth, but that didn't stop me from trying. I just looked for some of the most random fruits that would grow here, had great reviews, and little shelf life.

I have a lot of other starts that are about to get added too. I'll upload a few pics once things progress and you can actually SEE something. LOL

Best wishes!

Loquats

Some shots from around the place. Had 5 trees taken down around power lines, the house, and the well.
Added a shot of the neighbor's place to see what happens after a couple of years of being left alone.

these are some pictures of some of the new gardens i have been putting in.

theres actually hundreds of little plants in there, though they are still tiny and not so visible here.
yay for spring!






a young apple tree =)
these young yellow plum trees are coming in way too thick, already thinned them by transplanted some out, but i will see what happens after they all come in more developed. i think i have about fifty or more young plum trees =)

Our orchard with loads of baby berries, perennials, row crops and herbs - most of which are just waking up! Oh come-on spring!!!

Here is another set of pics that gives an overview of the design I'm working to complete. I will be filling will wood chips to clean the appearance (due to HOA). This particular bed is about 35'. Swale is currently about 15" x 15".

A large amount of water flows from my roof, into an underground drain, dumping into the swale.

We just had some good rain in DFW and thought it would be worth sharing so other getting started can have something to consider.