Vegetable garden-April 1, 2009

I finally had a chance to get out and take some pictures of the vegetable garden.

Not a whole lot going on yet since it's still early spring, but we've already had some challenges, and some success.

Currently the vegetable garden consists of 7 raised beds made from 5/4 cedar decking and 2"x4" boards. These beds range from 4'x4' to 4' x 12', and we plan on building three more beds to complete the spring garden, then we will likely add 3 more for the fall.

As I mentioned before, this is in our neighbors' back yard and 13 beds will pretty much fill up all usable sunny space. We've had several interesting looks when telling folks we're planting a veg garden in someone else's yard, but we like to think it is completely normal. We are good friends, and have been neighbors for 10 years, and both families have a desire to grow our own food.
Candes (my wife) and I contribute our experience and knowledge, and we share the work, expense, and the harvest.

Today, we have 28 tomato plants (18 varieties, with many heirloom varieties), 16 peppers (sweet banana, green bell, red Capistrano, and orange bell), 8 yellow squash, 12 green beans (pole and bush) , 18 cucumbers (9 green, 9 lemon yellow), many yellow and red onions, and a 4'x4' bed of Arugula, 9 Broccoli, and 9 Cauliflower, 5 green striped cantaloupe.

Over in our yard next door we have red and yellow onions (some of the green onions harvested above), Lettuce (red and green Romaine, and Mescaline mix), Meyer lemon and lime trees, as well as an herb garden with over a dozen herb varieties.

We will also mix vegetables in with the sunny parts of our landscape wherever possible. We should be ready to plant zucchini squash, okra, more beans, and melons once we complete the remaining beds.

These pictures show the long tomato bed, with 18 plants. We made the 5' tall cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. A 100' roll is about $90.00 at McCoy's, and it works out to about $3.50 per cage for the ones we made. Given the quality of these cages that is a bargain.

Tomatoes just outgrow the store bought 2' and 3' cages to quickly, so they aren't very effective. A healthy tomato plant may grow 10' or more in a season, so we may even need to add to the height of our 5' versions in a month or two.

We planted broccoli (below) in mid February, but with this crazy Texas weather (many days last month in the mid 80's) much of our broccoli bolted, and started flowering. It's still edible, but I think we may have started a bit late for broccoli. This should be a good crop for the fall.

The pic to the right shows some of the early squash coming on. I'm pretty optimistic about this..the bees have evidently been doing their work. We just need to make sure and keep the squash borers at bay.

This is the green bean bed, which also has some onions, and a pepper plant. I am (to my wife' displeasure) a collector of junk.

I have a hard time passing by a pile of discarded items in front of someones house without scanning for things I can use...or that just look cool.

On my way home for lunch yesterday I picked up this old ladder, which will make a perfect trellis for green beans to climb up.

The previous night I also picked up a really cool cedar glider bench...which I'll post pics of when I blog on our landscape garden.

I also saw this little green bean sprout poking his head out of the soil this morning. That's a pretty large chunk he's lifting...

Well, that about does it for the vegetable garden intro and tour. I'll take pics as the season goes on, and hopefully we can demonstrate success at this experiment.

I will also post some pics of our yard, which has been a work in progress for going on 10 years.

I appreciate any comments or advice you have.

Thanks for looking.

--Todd

Howdy

My name is Todd, and I live in Live Oak Texas (near San Antonio), and I've been gardening organically for almost 10 years. What began with putting a small herb garden in front of our porch 10 years ago has turned into a passion for experimenting with garden design, plants, organic solutions, hard scape, and garden 'art' (some call it junk).
My wife shares this passion, and we hope to impart a love of gardening to our two young boys.
Our most recent venture is a vegetable garden we will share with our next door neighbors, and that we are building in their backyard. Our relatively small backyard is consumed by two out buildings, a pond, play structure, and numerous ornamental beds, which doesn't allow much room for a vegetable garden. However the biggest challenge is that much of our yard is shaded by two large oak trees...which only gives us a small patch (about 4'x4') sunny enough to grow vegetables. This bed currently houses a family of red and yellow onions.
I am starting this blog as a way to journal the progress of the garden, and success and challenges that come out of it. I hope some folks find it interesting enough to visit. Thanks for reading.
I'll post some pics soon.