Garden picture exchange!

Devon Olsen wrote:^well Alex, I may have to agree with you that chicken looks pretty french lol

great pics though, makes me want amaranth now... i was kinda on the fence b4

The goat in particular looks more intelligent and sophisticated than the ones around here. Irene's photos
are some of the best on this thread and there are some good ones.

Zone 1

Thanks for your comments. I love gardening and i love taking photos...

Small hugelkultur beds next to the chicken shed


Raspberries under the oak, chicken shed, Pyke


Thornless blackberries with Digitalis and Mullen next to the plum tree

AMAZING PICS!!! Great Thread .. very inspirational ....can't wait to start my gardens

Things are starting to take shape. We had our first humming bird arrive today.

here is my set up thus far. i moved into this 2 acre property last summer so i was behind the ball last year. during the fall i set up a 12x5 fully enclosed bed plus im using my 18x18 chain link dog run as my container garden area

i really rent a gem of nj property. i am in a small community where everythings in walking distance and i have a large yard to practice permaculture ideas.

Brilliant !

I used an old tent frame for the same sort of thing to protect lettuce, cabbage and special seeds from the chickens.




Dense planting in shade and very dry soil under oak trees - this planting and the large shrubs behind it protects our house from the west wind




View of the oldest part of the garden in the woods from the top of the compost heap

60,000lb Excavator + Friend + 1 week = Hugelkulture gone mad.

This is the finished hugel bed in our field it's about 6 feet high and 30 feet wide...

This is the progression to the above photo...

i like your "u" shaped hugelbed, is it dug down inside of the "u" as it appears?
if so i wonder if youll get water pooling up there during rains, i get a decent amount of rainwater that collects at the base of mine during storms because of the spots that are dug down

No, this was build on top of the ground , no digging. I plan on placing a small pond just inside, the water collects there any how. It is south facing and i was hoping to create a microclimate inside the crescent but the wind shoots directly into the crescent. Now I'm planning another hugel facing north to interrupt the wind...

Hooray for going big with Hugel beds!

The size of your hugel bed you could feed a very large family and make a decent chunk of change selling your excess produce. I know Hugelkulture has its pros/cons, but from a space efficiency standpoint there is nothing that comes close, especially when combined with polyculture techniques and companion planting. How much space would have to consume on your property to grow the same amount of produce in a traditional row-based flat garden? Hugel grows veggies like nothing else and leaves more space for other crops/purposes.

Our largest hugel beds are approximately 6' high x 12' wide at the base x 120' long with a 2ft or so flattened crown. As our planting season is winding down it is truly jaw dropping how much you can grow on just one of these beds - far more than we anticipated at first - and we have 20 of them.

Each hugelbed has over 200 Tomato plants and at least as many peppers, approximately 100 summer squash, in addition to greens, herbs, root veggies, tomatillos, and a host of other crops too lengthy to get into. This gives us over 4000 tomato plants alone, with proper spacing, in a 1.5 acre enclosure. At an average yield of around 10lb/s a plant that is 20 TONS of tomatoes from our little polyculture garden.

Last night I was contemplating harvest and started worrying if our local high-school is large enough to provide for our labor needs, esp since machines are a no-go in our style of farming.

Eva Taylor wrote:This is the finished hugel bed in our field it's about 6 feet high and 30 feet wide...

Thomas, Do you direct seed your tomatoes or transplant them? Same goes with your other crops - do you transplant anything or just sow them? I would love to see pictures! Big hugels is the only way to go!!

I have three little 2x5x2 foot beds with annuals, clover, dandelions and perrenial onions.

I'm in zone 4 east coast.

Thanks!
Guarren

Other than winter squash, peas, beans, corn, some herbs, greens, and root veggies we transplant everything due to our short growing season. We live near Flathead Lake, which is the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes, and are in a "lake effect" climate classified as zone 5a. However our season is only approximately 123 days - we transplant primarily to provide a longer production cycle over our short season.

We prune the stems of our taller plants such as Tomatoes to have at least 24" of bare stem to allow us to grow living mulch underneath such as basil, summer squash, peppers, etc.

We have some pictures and video posted if you would like to check them out:

www.facebook.com/aquariusfarms

www.youtube.com/TheAquariusFarm

More media to come this weekend as I still have a day job (hopefully for not much longer... We will be posting regular updates all season along with some features on our irrigation system, mistakes and lessons learned, etc. We intend to share anything and everything - if you have questions, comments, advice, and/or criticism please don't hesitate to PM me or contact us at aquariusfarms@gmail.com

Thanks for your interest in our crazy experiment!

Guarren cito wrote:Thomas, Do you direct seed your tomatoes or transplant them? Same goes with your other crops - do you transplant anything or just sow them? I would love to see pictures! Big hugels is the only way to go!!

I have three little 2x5x2 foot beds with annuals, clover, dandelions and perrenial onions.

I'm in zone 4 east coast.

Thanks!
Guarren

Thomas West wrote:Hooray for going big with Hugel beds!

"The size of your hugel bed you could feed a very large family and make a decent chunk of change selling your excess produce. "

I was amazed at how much area was contained in this bed! it took forever to seed this, but seeding seemed to do the best job. I got impatient and bought some plants and then got hit by a late season frost. Lost everything but the seedlings, just goes to show how easily seeds adapt to seasonal extremes as compared to coddled greenhouse starts. all the seeds were planted at the same time but seemed to pop exactly when they were supposed to. This is the first serious attempt at a family garden with mostly seed starts, I just cant wait to see how things progress!

Winter time in Wellington-it snowed!
It only happens every few years.
Everyone was very excited and kids desperately scraped snow together to make slushy snowmen

espaliered apples, little hugel that's just been cover-crop seeded

site clearance 7/09; raised beds from 100" ash logs; bark to pathways; deFence was branch built on pole maple posts

I love this thread. Wonderful to see the principles in action, on the ground. Huge inspiration.

Here are a couple pics from my 300 square foot urban garden...

Irene Kightley wrote:
Dense planting in shade and very dry soil under oak trees - this planting and the large shrubs behind it protects our house from the west wind

Irene,

I would be very grateful for a list of plants growing in such conditions - I'm struggling with establishing ground cover under my oak, linden and norvegian mapple trees, dry soil as well, so it would be great to know how you have managed to develop such a beautiful landscape.

Hi Richard,

The land we bought had never had a house on it, so we had the opportunity in the design to prepare a system of water catchment before installing the windbreaks and planting. The preparation has paid off and I think to be honest that is the key to the succces of the planting – not the plants themselves.

We built the house on the side of a hill and he plan was that all water run-off was carried to ponds or swales or infiltration areas which were planted with suitable species. I'm sure I've already put an explanation and photos of the design into the forum – I'll have a look.

I'm not very good with lists, I tend to take photos to remind me what I've done but we could start a new thread to talk about this in more detail then other people can contribute too and we can leave this thread clean for some more great photos !

Here are a few photos from this morning. I just created the bed seen in the second picture. It's contoured to hold moisture inside and on the edges of the bed and it contains a few wood cores. I planted it with sweet potato and potato, a sage plant and a mix of seeds under the mulch. It's a bit hot, but we've had decent rain for this into summer.









Just a little explanation of the new bed's under the mulch contours:

I like how there are so many flower pictures.










OH LA LA !!

I am often busy working and observing my garden and I forget to take photos. Here is a picture of a hugelbeet. It ids in the shape of a spiral and we built it in three stages, learning as we go.

The above photo is of the first two sections right after the second was built and planted. Behind you can see our meadow

so here is an updated pic of some steps i put into my hugel, i couldnt get this thing steep enough to be easy on the back with the weeding so here is my solution!

Leila Rich wrote:
It's winter here, and while things are looking sad and cold, that white stuff is calcium I'd just chucked around, not snow!
1 You can just see the red rocoto chillies in amonst the black passionfruit vine. Need a temperate-climate climbing perennial chilli that has fruit all through winter?

i am totally loving on the rocotos/manzano peppers too =)
of all the peppers i have tried to get going in this climate (not a good climate for peppers at all, but warmish most of the year) this is the best here, they get enormous! produce huge amount of peppers, seem hardier than any other pepper, live throughout the winter and produce peppers in january and feb, and taste excellent! i have been growing the orange and yellow ones too(usually called manzano instead), as well as the classic red rocoto.

nice pictures all =)

irene knightly your gardens are so gorgeous!

maybe i will come back and add some pics....

Great pictures everyone. Thought I might add a picture of a sunflower I'm pretty proud of. I planted several in this spot, I'm thinking frost took out the others. I have plenty of sunflowers scattered out on the lot, but this one I hope to get some seeds off of.

Starting to eat beans, tomatoes, blueberries. etc. I always let the birds eat the mulberries but this year they had me to contend with and
they were great. Last year we had figs in May and this year they are back to normal.

Here are a few flowers for you.

ok i will join in =)

some recent pics of my gardens

thimbleberries, artichokes, elderberry, fuschia, tons of garlic, tons o blackberries in the back, radish, onions, and greens/brassicas in the tall beds +++ some more stuff

the living fence, made of willow and other plants:





pineapple sage, hollyhocks, fuschia, flax, more thimbleberries, some day lillies which are hiding, nasturtiums which should take off soon, passionflowers growing way too slow, some spinach, beets, and viola +++ more plants than i can remember right now =)

another side of the fence

getting big bags of chammomile, arugula, sage, thyme, more hollyhocks, and lots of common mallow volunteers here, as well as lots of brassicas planted

kiwis, now starting to grow into the willows, which was the plan....




with some more patches of thimbleberries and other plants
it's all actually grown a lot more, this was a month ago or more

My landlady let me dig up the yard so I give her kale whenever she shows up.

More pics at my blog:

http://dilloncruz72.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/in-which-the-blogger-returns-to-matters-domestic/

Brian Jeffrey wrote:

OH LA LA !!

Ok, never seen that. Exabitionist rollie pollies.....

June 27th! micro hugel beds

Plenty of rain this year.