Garden picture exchange!

Druce Batstone wrote:

mark masters wrote:Getting rain early, the garlic is looking good, the hugle is planted and the our last freeze was a week ago. Rainbow Country!!

The garlic bed is fantastic. How do you manage to get such even growth of what looks like a large leaf area per plant? I can not get my head around the very lush growth with the last freeze only one week ago! You should have a bumper yield. I was amazed to learn that the yield of garlic could be as high as 40 t/ha with plant densities of 600,000/ha ( http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/39/6/1272.full.pdf ). May I suggest you weigh the garlic (after drying) and calculate the yield per square metre. Even better, also count the number of leaves, roughly estimate the length of the longer green leaves and measure the average stalk diameter of a sample of plants. Post the results on Permies for all of to try to emulate.

We are at 7500ft, right at the base of a 12,000ft mountain. These are tough conditions to farm some things in. The Garlic we found at a local farmers market. Its found along the ditches in these mountains. We grew it last year to great success and planted this from our crop. It produces huge cloves and is very strong. We have a patch of seed garlic from colorado that has much smaller leaf and diameters. We will see how the cloves produce, but the difference is noticeable.

This year the garlic started coming up in late February, we had many hard freezes, some as low 10 degrees.

We have had Two severe hail storms this spring and it has frosted again just last night. Its the day before summer!

My first Hugelbed. Covered in a nice cover crop of flowers. The pollinators are loving it. Every time I walk out to look at the Progress, the noise from the bees an other critters is amazing. I am really looking Forward to next year when I can plant and get the rest of my garden going.

Here's my first hugel bed in it first year...Potatoes and squash are happy and it should be pretty full by late summer.
I've had some challenges with this mound heating up as I've shown in other threads.
https://permies.com/t/35789/hugelkultur/Hugelkultur-bed-twist

Hello!

New to the forum, but I've been gardening for as long as I can remember, but organic gardening for about ten years. My husband and I bought our home back in 2012 and I was excited to get started on my new adventures in gardening. I do suffer from fibromyalgia, so I do what work I can when I can and allow my husband to do the heavy lifting and grunt work (though, I won't lie..I sometimes do things I shouldn't just because I can't resist feeling like an adult again).

I grew up in the mountains of NC and I miss the wildness of it all, so I am trying to bring that sense of nature back to my own yard in the flatlands of coastal GA. But a lot of pictures I've seen here have really been inspiring for me too


Here's a small shot of the yard in 2012 after I cleared it out of dead trees and weeds. Unfortunately, we have a monster of a sweetgum tree, so we are constantly fighting the spiky balls. Initially, the yard was chock full of mexican hydrangea, a horribly invasive plant. I have, over time, kept up with pulling every little sprout that tried to peek through the soil and I think maybe I find one every other month.


My poor pomegranate that had been stuck in a pot for 6 years and always flowered, but never produced till this year!


Another look in 2013




Pomegranate


My helpers. Olley, the cat is now indoors (12 yrs old). Casie, my old lady potato dog, is 17 years.



Current of 2014, taken a few weeks ago before I did a chop and drop on the grass.


Sadly, the sweetgum tree was nice enough to drop a branch into my corn patch and thus, smashed them all :C




To the right are my 4 year old papayas. I wrap them in blankets and christmas lights during the winter to protect them from freezing. Before I planted them, I would drag them indoors to overwinter. The sunflowers are from birdfeed I scattered and let grow for the birds, bees, and butterflies. Had to stake them up with PVC pipes over solid rebar to keep them from falling over. I also keep my peppers in planters, those do go inside every winter. The current peppers are 3 years old and keep doing better each year. Sadly, the holly that was against the garage had already been suffering from severe root rot and we removed it, giving the trunk to our friend who helped take it down. When he cleaned up and cut the wood, the inside of the tree had been dead and dry for some time.



Eventually we're planning to put a fully enclosed chicken run (for 3 layers) along the garage with the coop inside the back corner of the garage itself. We're also going to hugel the left bed and right bed after we raise the bottoms up from the soil. Our sweetgum has already filled the left box with roots 9_9

I do keep a blog on tumblr for the garden as it progresses. We do plan to complete the front and back yards to be all edibles and wildflowers.

That's beautiful Hannah !

I've been so busy for the past few weeks working inside the house and I've kind of forgotten about taking photographs of the garden.

Here are some of my most recent ones.

Purple beans, Raspberries, Tayberries


Lots of Artichokes now that the sun is shinng with a chicken shed completely covered in climbers


Coriander vietnamese, Melissa, Victoria rhubarb and asparagus


Nanking Cherry, Mirabelle, Elder, Foxglove

I have been trying to document everything my food forest as it ripens...

Raspberries


Here is my raspberry/marionberry/grape/cornelian cherry guild:


More Raspberries


And more...


And I picked a lot more raspberries that I did not photograph.

Just picked the last of the red raspberries, the first of the marionberries, and some purple raspberries.

Dave that is a beautiful bunch of raspberries! Irene you have to get out and take pictures more often.

My tomatoes are coming in.

The Garlic rocked our world again, a great strain for this altitude. We have had our share of set backs, but I feel the plants respond well to adversity.

Just getting started with gardening, but here is what we put together. Tilled up the soil, dug in paths on contour with stones to walk on, added some old manure, and planted a few things we had started in the plastic house. Then we scattered a bunch of green manure seeds. So we will see how it turns out, but I thought I would add the pictures that I have for now.

figured i would post my successes here I'm my central Florida backyard.

this has been a long time coming as, when i moved in the years ago it was nothing but lawn and being that i rent every thing had come free or the deal was too good to pass up.

compost everything.

Gotta love the berry season here in Northwest Montana at Organic Life Guru HQ.

Another image from the Organic Life Guru Outpost in Nortwest Montana.

Am new to Hugelkultur, having stumbled across a blog that showed theirs. It was the perfect solution to my problem of filbert stumps taken out because of blight. This spring I threw some dirt onto the logs and stumps and started planting seeds and starts until it turned into a green mound.

Looking good Jewell ! Thanks for sharing the pictures!

And welcome to permies!

yum so many raspberries =)




pomegranate



building some new garden beds

Just a quick update...

^^^^such vibrant colors on your veggies!^^^

heres some more, i have been playing with my camera a lot.
i cant take full credit for this garden, its more than four sets of hands work...

Ryan Molpus wrote: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.

Looks so good! Very HOA friendly. How is it doing these days? I would love to see an update.

Every year I grow a load of tomatoes and a few other Solanums,
and sell them on Labour weekend (around September 23rd).
They need to be a pretty good size to sell, so I start them in August on a heat pad.
The window glass in the cold frames has been replaced with old perspex gaming machine fronts-
I'd smash glass instantly
The bottles of water heat up during the day and release warmth at night.


I've judged my 'partially-buried mini hugel' experiment a 'fail'.
In my sandy environment., anything vaguely above ground doesn't work.
It's now a garden for my flatmate to play with
[
I've finally moved lots of fruit trees/shrubs onto what's always been annual garden.
I now have a really small 'garden' and the rest is a sort of food forest.

The photo below was taken before I'd put down the tree mulch; it looks less chaotic now!

Apologies for the impossible-to-read colours; I can't be bothered doing them again
These espaliered fruit trees are in their fourth season.
This entire area's quite small-around about 650 feet. I'm a big advocate for espalier in small spaces.

They're hiding in these photos, but there's heaps of flower bulbs, Florence fennel, swan plants, nasturtiums, alliums, comfrey, yarrow, strawberries, violets, clover, etc etc

I just read about hugelkultur and immediately got to work and built 2 largish beds chock full of a very old apple gum timber from a tree that had fallen.
Possum and wallaby proofing was top priority so I caged the garden with chicken wire
I transplanted some purple cabbage and sprinkled heaps of seeds for the 1st crop.


Total cost was $140au for the chicken wire but overall this garden should give me many years of quality organic produce.

I've talked about my garlic-growing comparison somewhere, but I can't remember where...

In the same bed I'm growing:
garlic from stock I've been growing and replanting in my mother's garden for several years.
The brown powder is used coffee grounds-I'm in the 'feed em with nitrogen' phase

I'll make sure she saves me enough of hers so I can fill the bed next season!

NZ-grown organic commercial garlic and NZ-grown supermarket garlic.
You can't tell the difference between them

The peach guild is coming along

I'm pretty surprised the tree's blossoming for the first time,
although I suspect transplant may well have brought on a bit of a leafy/flowery tree freakout
Guild includes: random seedling white clingstone peach, globe artichoke, lavender, loads of flowering bulbs, sweet peas, mint, dandelions, Florence fennel, yarrow, thyme, oregano...
and the 'usual suspects'-things that always show up at my place: rocket. Giant red mustard. Upland cress. Picking celery. Calendula...
The dead things along the fence are shrubs I cut down elsewhere and tied there-it's where my perennial runner beans are and they'll make good bird/bean climbing frames.

David Harcourt wrote:this garden should give me many years of quality organic produce

Welcome to permies David
How's the garden going?
About now's when things really start to get going round here.

What a great year, we are still looking for the first frost of the year, endless drying and canning, hope to make it through the winter with lots of bounty.
It is always amazing at how much we learn and how excited we are for the preparation for next year.

It's mid spring and despite the El Nino gales, it's been a great season for blossoming.
My espaliered Cox's orange.
I think apples have about the prettiest fruit tree blossoms-although the old carpet/compost area aint so pretty


finally after five seasons, The plum's fruiting. Woohoo! I'm going to practice bud grafting on it this summer.

Chestnuts are starting to drop! These are from under my parent's trees where I have great memories of hunting for the biggest chestnut when I was a kid so I can't begin to explain how much I love seeing my kids get the same experience.

I'm still in the process of transplanting some of the prolific volunteers that pop up under my parent's trees out to my property as well as poking nuts in the ground all over the place so hopefully we'll be seeing some bumper crops in 10-12 years.

I love FALL gardens - our orchard forest.

I laid this chard on my friend's table and it was agreed that it would make a nice picture.

This is my layout for my terraced hugelkultur beds. Setting them up now to be ready for the spring. Just starting out on the land!
Check out the link for the blog post!

http://nepermhome.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/not-a-square-garden/

I worked through half an hour of rain yesterday, assuming that it would get worse. It cleared up just as I reached the parking area. There were two rainbows. This one was brilliant even on a cell phone photo.

A big compost was built and covered. This time of year, clear days are dwindling. I'm always hurrying to beat the rain.

I love the garden at this time of year
This is mainly the garlic bed, but the usual suspects have shown up: daikon, purple mustard, Russian red kale...
There's a tomato hidden by the stake, and a surprise nigella plant about to flower too.

Self sown poppies and mignonette. They've basically taken over, but the fantastic Chinese lettuce I've forgotten the name of is holding its own...


Broad bean (fava), the incredible perennial Florence fennel, romanesco broccoli, perpetual spinach (a kind of chard)
There's corno di toro pepper seedlings in the slot machine greenhouses



Marina di chiogga pumpkin and costada romanesco zucchini with tyres as heat sinks.
Flowering rocket, young globe artichoke, Florence fennel, red clover, bluebells, a really roughly fan trained plum that's finally fruiting!

My version of terracing.

some part of my garden from finland

I think this is one of my favorite threads...And now I finally have something to contribute to it! Have a property now that I can really play around with. First thing I did was get rid of the giant wildlife killer of a pool and put in some dry stone raised beds! I've got a ways to go with the property to develop it. A lot of design challenges (opportunities?) with it being completely enclosed in dense cedar trees, and a septic/leaching bed taking up a big chunk of the property. Thankfully, the south facing side is wide open for development and our water table is very high, so I am hoping to see ponds in my near future. But this is what I managed to squeeze in this year on a tight schedule!

oh and don't mind my rustic trellis - had to use what I had - a lot of cedar branches!!

This is my fifth hugel bed for this year. My attempt at three sisters was a failure last year, as the beans rotted, and also some of the pumpkin plants did too, or got mildew. The idea with this bed is to have it as a raised flat plateau with a slight decline from the middle towards the edges, so what water that doesn't soak into the bed, pours off. It will be planted out with popcorn, cherokee trail of tears bean, and a variety of pumpkin and watermelon seed.









At this point, it started raining. So I covered it up to protect it from the unfenced chickens. There's just a little more soil to move on top, then I can flatten it out and plant it out.



It'll have to be fenced off with bird netting, before being planted out, to keep the chickens away.

your garden looks lovely Vida

Vida Norris wrote:don't mind my rustic trellis - had to use what I had -

If that's rustic, mine is...really rustic!

Where abouts are you Roger? Somewhere with some good rocks anyway!

Roger Taylor wrote:My attempt at three sisters was a failure last year, as the beans rotted, and also some of the pumpkin plants did too, or got mildew

Do you mean the beans themselves, or the plants rotted?
I've always read/learned been told that cucurbits, corn and beans are best direct seeded.
So I did.
This season, I started zucchini, pumpkin and beans early and transplanted-they're looking great.
I also direct-seeded some later, but they haven't come up yet.

I think three sisters is a really difficult system, as climate and knowledge are probably missing all sorts of things that made it such a success.
I've never seen/heard anyone say "my three sisters garden was awesome"
I've only tried it once, as I decided growing drying corn wasn't for me.

No matter how hard I try, Mother Nature kicks my butt~ A few pics for a hike up a creek the bisects our land. Can't take any credit other than having a camera.

Leila Rich wrote:Where abouts are you Roger? Somewhere with some good rocks anyway!

Roger Taylor wrote:My attempt at three sisters was a failure last year, as the beans rotted, and also some of the pumpkin plants did too, or got mildew

Do you mean the beans themselves, or the plants rotted?
I've always read/learned been told that cucurbits, corn and beans are best direct seeded.
So I did.
This season, I started zucchini, pumpkin and beans early and transplanted-they're looking great.
I also direct-seeded some later, but they haven't come up yet.

I think three sisters is a really difficult system, as climate and knowledge are probably missing all sorts of things that made it such a success.
I've never seen/heard anyone say "my three sisters garden was awesome"
I've only tried it once, as I decided growing drying corn wasn't for me.

Geraldine. Both rotted.

If I had plants out there already like yourself, I'd probably have lost them to the hail.

I don't think three sisters is that complicated. As a system it makes sense for somewhere with lots of sunshine, and not so much water. Like the deserts where the native americans classically used it. I would probably be better off just growing popcorn, but it won't hurt to give it another try just out of interest.