Thursday, July 9, 2015

Around the Garden

Hello there, my friends, I thought I would take you on a little tour of the garden today, so grab a cup of tea and join me. Let's start in the front garden, shall we?



This bed was one of our winter garden spaces. We planted it in late March with a variety of salad greens, spinach, kale, marigolds and zinnias. We are eating it up as fast as we can, as it will soon be seeded with a cover crop to get it ready for our fall/winter garden season.


Here we have a bush beans, carrots, dill, marigolds, calendula, kale, Swiss chard, pole beans, and sunflowers.


And in this bed, tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, sage, basil, zinnias, marigolds, and cosmos. Tucked in the back corner of the garden, there is another little bed that you can see in this photo. It was a last minute addition after we finished all the fencing, and it was seeded with sunflowers, zinnias, and calendula. I have high hopes for that little corner, it should be a burst of colour in another month.



The cold frame was planted in late March with salad greens, beets, kale, spinach, and Swiss chard. Those beets are just about ready to harvest, and I am pretty excited about that. We will soon harvest everything from the cold frame as well so we can prep the soil for our fall/winter garden.





We have two rather long raised beds. This one is filled with bush beans, runner beans, snow peas, sweet William, cucumbers, sunflowers, calendula, and thyme.


And the other long raised bed is filled with soon to be harvested garlic! There was a bit of space at the end of the bed, so I threw in a few tomato plants and marigolds.


As we leave the front garden, a large archway to try our hand at growing pumpkins, squash, zucchini and cucumber up. At this moment I am thinking with all the rain we have had recently they are a little water logged. Yellowing leaves with no sign of bugs has me thinking this. So I will let them dry out a bit, and then add some fertilizer to give them a little boost. Fingers crossed I am right.


On to the garden I refer to as the chicken run garden, due to it's location in front of the chicken run.


The first raised bed is filled with asparagus. I planted these earlier this season. They are two year old crowns, so if all goes well, we should be able to harvest next spring, although I might leave them one more year before harvesting. We will make that decision next spring.


And here we have our berries. Right in front of the chicken run are late season raspberries. And the bed in front of that has a row of first year raspberries, and a row of first year blueberries. There is space for another row of blueberries that I will plant next spring. I have also left space in this garden area for another bed of strawberries, to be planted next spring.


And around the corner we head into the back garden.


A raised bed filled with a variety of food, kale, beets, Swiss chard, salad greens and calendula.


First season strawberries!



Another mix and match raised bed with tomatoes, carrots, bush beans, runner beans, borage, chives, parsley and marigolds.


The final raised bed in the back garden with kale, Swiss chard, beets, mustard greens and calendula.


In the center of the back garden, a small herb garden is filled with catnip, rosemary, all-heal, bee balm, yarrow, St. John's wort, lavender, lemon balm and echinacea.



Two smaller raised beds at the front of the back garden, meant to contain easy to take over herbs...nettles and peppermint.


And the final raised bed, in front of the play structure. Growing here are alpine strawberries, a few tomatoes, sunflowers and blackberries.

Thanks for joining me on that little tour, I hope you enjoyed it. As you can see beets are almost ready to harvest, the snow peas keep rolling in, the green beans are starting to produce, and the greens continue to show up at pretty much every meal. And did you see those tomatoes? There are plenty of them starting to show up, and while it will be a little while before we harvest any, just seeing them makes me happy.

Before I sign off, a few harvests from the week:


A herbal harvest...calendula, chamomile, lavender, yarrow and St. John's wort. There are a variety of herbs planted in the back garden, but there are also a lot planted in the perennial beds around our property. Herbs, especially medicinal herbs, are something I can never have enough of.


And one of many before meal harvests..snow peas and Swiss chard. These were sauteed up, with onion, garlic and local asparagus, tossed with some pasta and topped with a lovely cashew cream sauce. It was delicious!

So tell me, how are things around your garden this week?

41 comments:

  1. Wonderful tour Kim!!! Your garden is such a paradise... IN my little garden, arrugula (roquet do you call it?) is nearly ready to harvest and to make a cashew sauce for pasta...while garlic has already been harvested (for half of it)... love to see how fast it grows at your place!

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    1. Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it. Sounds like things are growing well in your garden. Enjoy those harvests.

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  2. Thank you so much for that lovely tour. Everything is so nice. I can't wait for our gardens to get as mature. But we have made quite a bit of progress this year, things look much nicer. We've been getting yellowing leaves as well, but from our pepper plants. We tried applying slow release fertilizer pellets last week but haven't seen much progress. We do have lots of flowers though so fingers crossed!

    We are finally at a seeding place as well. The lettuces are nowhere near, but have started to get a bit stronger in taste. Our arugula and spinach are seeding now. We have designated a patch of 4th planting radishes to seed but they are yet to go up. It's hilarious, the radishes look like beets! LOL! Hey! The way I see it, the seeds will be amazing. But yes, breaking out the cover crops here as well.

    Oh! And we have tiny little beans... no where near harvesting yet, but I'm so excited!!!!

    Can I pick your brain : Have you ever frozen lettuce to use in smoothies? Somebody suggested it but honestly, I'm worried about the actual texture, you know? Would love to read your thoughts.

    Have a wonderful day!

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    1. You are most welcome my friend. It won't be long before I can tour you around in person...can't wait!

      Gosh, our spinach seeded weeks ago, and the lettuce has been starting. I noticed the beans earlier this week and I got a little giddy. We have only harvested a few here and there to eat right off the plant, but it won't be long before I am swimming in beans, and canning a whole lot of dilly green beans :)

      I have never frozen lettuce, other greens yes, but not lettuce. I would think they would disintegrate, but if you just using them for smoothies then that would be okay, right? I guess you could try it and see. Can't hurt.

      Thanks, we had a great day, hope you did too!

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  3. Wow Kim it's all looking amazing and I don't think I'd grasped just how big your garden is. Does it keep you in veggies for the whole year round? I'd love to know how you manage long term storage. And also what are you planning to plant as a cover crop, I think I get the gist of cover crops but I don't know what you would actually use!

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    1. Thanks Carie. Yes it is pretty big, just spread out all over our property to take best advantage of the sun :) It comes close. We still have green beans and zucchini left from last year, and a few jars of pickles. We have reached a stage where we do well until about March, and then things start to dwindle. Every year we try to do a little more canning and freezing, and every year we get a little further.

      Long term storage...we can and freeze for the most part. Last winter we kept our garlic and potatoes in the basement (which is not really a basement, but we call it that). I would love to build a root cellar down there, and we have talked about it and will most likely do it at some point.

      Cover crops are basically green manures that feed the soil and all the lovely creatures that live in our soil. Through the process of growing the cover crop and then turning it over into the soil before it goes to seed nutrients are returned to the soil that may have been depleted during the growing season. Cover crop plantings will include crimson clover, fall rye and buckwheat. This will be our first year experimenting with them.

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    2. thank you - I shall have to look into what cover crops I can grow in the UK :)

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    3. You are most welcome. I would think the clover and buckwheat would do well over there as a cover crop, and I don't see why the fall rye wouldn't either.

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  4. Your garden is spectacular and green and wonderful! We never did plant anything because of my husband's new job and the impending wedding....I'm okay with that-it's been crazy busy!!

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    1. Thanks Karen. I bet you are okay with it, and there is always next year, right?

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  5. Very impressive, I love your garden. Here is my blog: www.simpleinbigcity.blogspot.ca

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  6. You've created quite the Eden!!!everything is looking healthy and lovely.

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    1. Thanks Erica, so pleased with the progress so far :)

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  7. Oh it looks like magazine garden. So lovely! I posted about my garden today too. The veggies are trickling along. We are waiting for the summer rains to come on. The heat is holding though in the mid 90's which is really nice so no heat stroke for my plants. For us we are always harvesting tomatoes and basil. I'm hoping my runner beans will come back into production. I assume once the heat goes below 98.

    Thank you for a full tour of your garden. So lovely!

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    1. Aw, thanks KC, that is so sweet of you to say. I already stopped in to see your garden, it is looking great considering the time of year. Let's hope those summer rains come soon.

      You are most welcome, I hope one day to tour you around in person :)

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  8. My goodness what awesome gardens you have!! They are beautiful, nice and neat. I love the gravel paths.

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    1. Thank you! I love my gravel paths too, they make me so happy :)

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  9. oh my gosh, i love that play structure! so i'm curious, what do you grow the zucchini and cucumbers up on? (sorry if there is a picture in there and i missed it).

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    1. Thanks Carlin. We built that two summers ago, and it gets very well used.

      I am growing the cucumbers up an old farm fence. It is supported on an angle in the garden, and the cucumber seeds were planted along the base of it. They have started to grow up it. I will try to get a photo of it next week.

      The squash, pumpkin, zucchini and more cucumbers are growing up an archway we made. You can just see it a little bit of it in the photo of the four pots. We made it from cattle panels and have our fingers crossed it works.

      Hope that helps.

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  10. I loved my tea and my tour Kim, thank you. Except for my herbs everything here is about gone. Gosh I am tired of this heat. Well, that's not quite true, I am picking the last of the blueberries and the figs are finally ripe, but as far as the vegetable garden goes it's done! I am taking a break for a month and then will get the fall garden started.
    Your garden looks amazing!

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    1. Aw, you're welcome Tracey. Yes, that heat for you this summer is not good for the gardens. Blueberries and figs...yum! We still have a few weeks til blueberry season :) Enjoy your gardening break.

      Thank you!

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  11. Thank you for the tour! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although, I am a bit envious as our season has been a bit dismal so far. But, such is the life of a gardener. I keep reminding myself to be patient, we will still get a good harvest, even if it is behind schedule.

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    1. You are most welcome my friend. Yes, life as a gardener can be up or down, just depending on the season. We have to roll with it and make the best of it.

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  12. One day, if we make it back for another visit this summer, I should like to take a look around the gardens in person! I don't know why I never think of it.. though perhaps it is no small feat to take it all in! We are a very long way from where you're at in your gardening experience, and will likely never get there, but inspiration in real life is always nice :)

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    1. You know, I never tour people around, unless they ask, of course. I will make sure to give you the official tour when you are here next time, promise.

      Happy to inspire my friend. And you never know, maybe one day you will be here, only time will tell :)

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  13. Truly a beautiful and productive garden! Thanks so much for showing us! And as well, wonderful pictures too!

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    1. You are most welcome, thanks for taking the time to stop by :)

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  14. So beautiful, Kim! I am amazed at how much you produce each year...so robust and such a lovely variety! Do you sell any of it it? How do you keep up with the harvest without any going to waste? I am newer at vegetable gardening, so I would love any tips you can give on the harvesting part!

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    1. Thanks Kristen! No we don't sell any, but I do share with friends when we have an abundance of something. I like sharing :)

      Keeping up...you just do. I have stocked everything I need for canning so when things are ready I harvest, and get to work. It looks like the next week or so will see canning begin big time with dilly green beans, and pickled beets. I will start to gather greens for freezing and for pesto over the next few weeks too, making a batch of pesto here and there, or just throwing the greens in the freezer. I find around mid August we hit a place where the canner is going non stop for a bit, just so much coming in from the garden. But is is work that I love, and it feels good to know this food, the food we grew, will help sustain us over the long winter.

      If you have specific questions just shout, always happy to share what works for us. Enjoy!

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    2. Thanks for your reply, Kim. We have a huge basil crop this year, so I need to begin pesto making. I have a recipe from Moosewood that I like, but if you know of any other recipes that use large quantities of basil, I'm all ears! :)

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    3. No problem Kristen, always happy to help if I can :)

      Hmm...pesto would be my go to if there was an abundance of basil. Not sure if you can freeze basil as is. I know some herbs can be frozen in ice cube trays with olive oil, then they are ready to toss into a recipe all winter long. And of course lots of tomato sauce, and roasted tomatoes with basil, both can be frozen. Hope that helps.

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  15. your garden is so aesthetically pleasing as well as productive. I cannot get over how beautiful every part of it is, fencing, trellises, gates, plant arrangement .. all so lovely on the eye

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    1. Thanks Aimee, I have to admit to smiling every time I walk out there :)

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  16. Wow what a tour. I love that, 'and around the corner to the back garden'. It just keeps going. Love it. And, that sunflower - it is so tall! Thanks for the tour.

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    1. Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. If you are ever in the area, you are more than welcome to stop in for a tour in person :)

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  17. It's looking very beautiful, and I love how so many of your beds have such a variety of food in them. I have not made it out into the garden so much over the last few weeks, just bits here and there, and it's definitely calling out for a little more attention in places - I'm hoping to get out there for a longer spell tomorrow.

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    1. Thanks Sally. That is an experiment this year, a little more companion planting, and me stepping out of my comfort zone. I am so pleased with how it all turned out, everything is doing so well, and for the most part the bugs are few.

      Hope you got to spend some time in your garden today.

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  18. Wow! I had no idea you had that much land and your garden was that big. Amazing.
    You have a gorgeous garden....now I have a clearer picture of how you're about to feed your family from your own garden year round.

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    1. It is hard to really capture it all and make sense of it, that's why I thought a tour was a good idea. Glad you enjoyed it :)

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  19. You're garden is looking AMAZING!! Great job Kim! It looks like you have a nice mix of annual veggies with perennial veg, fruit, herbs & flowers too! Oh I wish I could travel at the click of a heel and visit your lovely space. I hope you're enjoying summer! It's been crazy hot here and we've only JUST been relieved of wildfire evacuation (it was a nervous 9 days straight).

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    1. Aw, thanks Isis, that's a big compliment coming from you :) You are welcome here anytime my friend, just let me know when you are coming. The cottage in the backyard is ready for guests.

      Oh no! I had no idea. Glad all is okay, and that you weren't evacuated. Hope the fires calm down and that some rain finds you soon. xo

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