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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Nov 09 2011 at 10:38am | IP Logged
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Wow, Sally! What a place! We are thinking of starting out with wire fencing around the three back sides and the wood for the front. Not sure. Mostly, we hope to get the posts into the ground later this fall when it is easier to clear out the brush and fell some trees (is that how you say it?) but before the ground freezes hard and there is tons of snow. We don't have to decide on what to put between the posts until Spring, but we'll need to have an idea of what we want and where.
I requested tons of books from the library, but I'll have to wait impatiently until next Tuesday to get them 
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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SallyT
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| Posted: Nov 09 2011 at 10:56am | IP Logged
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Isn't it amazing? I have more pictures from our first visit 2 years ago, and I'll look and see if I have any better ones of the garden. This year I forgot my camera, but I was really noticing the layout of her huge, lush lettuces and other greens. She also has two rows of willows for basketmaking, which is her other occupation.
I've never actually met these people -- they're always away when we go up there. Boy, would I love to follow Louise around the garden, though.
Sally
eta: rats, I don't think I do have any more good garden pictures, at least not on this computer. Will have to scroll through my camera to see if any more are on there. I know I'm always looking at the garden a lot when I'm there -- how can I not have photographed it more??
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Castle in the Sea
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Nov 10 2011 at 7:17pm | IP Logged
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I came across images from this movie garden some time ago. I'd really like to see it just to get a better look, but unfortunately from reading the plot summary, it doesn't sound like anything I want to see 
I do plan on reserving the most recent Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter mysteries as fluff to read while garden dreaming.
Are there any other movies or books you'd recommend to inspire and indulge as you plan? 
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Nov 12 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged
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I think I may have convinced my husband to put the garden on the front of the house off of the screened in porch (off the dinng room) that we hope to make the kitchen some day (turning the current kitchen into a butler's pantry).
So, you can see how this would be very convenient as a kitchen garden. 
It will mean getting a tree taken out, possibly two. The first is an older silver maple that is leaning, so it is on borrowed time anyway. We might get several more years from it if desired, but it is not a big loss if replaced with a garden, just and expense we wouldn't otherwise have in the short term.
The second is a weeping cherry that I like but my husband tolerates. It isn't all that shady that I recall (hard to tell without leaves)' so we might be able to keep it.
The other option is the back of the yard. I was pretty leery of that from the get go as I'm imagining myself pregnant not doing a darn thing because it takes all my time and energy just to walk out to the darn thing.
You can see where my preference lies, but I'd love to hear opinions since I'm a smidge nervous about the front of the house (there will still need to be a tall fence like the one I posted above--will it look strange?) and while my husband isn't opposed to the front, he still likes the idea of it in the back and doesn't share my quirky mental barriers that I concede are quirky but, for all the commitment a garden entails, must be considered.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Nov 12 2011 at 7:50pm | IP Logged
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I'm going to validate you, Lindsay, but your reasons are good.
First of all, a kitchen garden/potager needs to be near the kitchen! There are a plethora of practical reasons why this is so: maintaining, watering, gathering, ease of weeding (or at least the motivation to go there and weed because it isn't that far off the house), and of course harvesting and bringing produce into the home.
We've had our gardens all over here in various attempts to be intuitive and have failed at them so far. We had a few small raised beds out back because we didn't want them to be out front. Failed. I didn't see them enough and they weren't really near a door or window. We put a good size garden in the ground toward the back of our property and that didn't work well for us either. It was too far from watering sources and our summers can be quite hot and we tend towards droughts in the summer. And again, it was too far from the house and I didn't see it.
I finally got over (read: I finally convinced Rob he could get over) a garden not being visible from the front of the house. Our kitchen potager will be on the west side and front of the house. It's near a water source and right outside my kitchen. I don't envision perfection, but I hope it will be more workable. The potager will be near our compost now, near water, near my back kitchen door, and will be seen anytime we pull in/out of the driveway. And one of the characteristics of a potager is its inherent charm which I think makes it completely doable for a highly visible area like a front yard. It's not a far cry to consider a trellis toward the front of the potager to form a sort of screen either. And the possibilities for cultivating charming, inviting spaces within the garden from there are endless.
Just my thoughts!
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 12 2011 at 8:26pm | IP Logged
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We have more challenge in our climate than anything. Very short growing season.
Jenn - I've thought of doing hanging indoor pots for things like herbs or lettuce.. if you pick off the leaves instead of trying to pick full heads.. you can probably grow a good bit in a confined space like that.
I've also given the flower beds in the front to my daughters for herb gardens and flowers. We have some chives that survive but don't spread like I've heard they will.. but they keep coming back so..
I have a pretty basic garden and it is out back and off to the side.. but having more temperate summer weather we actually spend a good bit of time outside.
I'd love to install a drip system to it.. pvc pipes/hose of some sort.. .just laid on top of the ground that we'd hook into water by a spliter on the backyard faucet.. we could use the hose for watering the grass etc or switch it over to the drip lines.. and a timer on it would make watering pretty low maintanance.
My plan is to add in marigolds and nastursiums to the garden.. it's supposed to help with bugs.. and the nastursium blooms are edible and can make a really pretty addition to salad or a garnish. And I also want to add in lettuce in the corners instead of a bed of a lettuce bed.
But some things need to be kept together. I really want to do a strawberry bed and those will have to be kept together to winterize.. they'll need a good amount of protection to overwinter here.
I have a flower bed in the backyard that I'd like to make an asparagus bed.. maybe with the purple asparagus.. that would look pretty.. but I'm not sure about starting that if we might get to add on to the house.. it wouldn't be in the space I want to use but it would be at that end of the house and I'm not sure I'd want it in "danger" and it might be better to wait.
Though who knows when or if Id ever actually get the addition.. but I sure would like it... my idea would give us a second bathroom and end up with 3 bedrooms big enough for 3 bunk beds.. two living room areas albeit small.. new windows through out a direct exit to the back patio and a tiny bit of extra space in my kitchen including a table for 2 so if I have a friend stop by we can sit in the kitchen to visit.
And I keep thinking that something like pole beans or peas would be a great thing to plant with a trellis over the patio.  grows fast for shade in the summer but you'd pull it all down once it started to get cold and have all the sunshine back on that side of the house for winter.
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Angel
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| Posted: Nov 14 2011 at 7:58pm | IP Logged
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Angel wrote:
Our garden is a maze design... or at least that's what we're aiming for. Right now we have almost all the outside beds built: 4 L-shaped beds at each corner with 1 rectangular bed in between on each side. Inside those beds will be 4 more smaller L beds arranged in a square. Our goal is to make brick or stone paths at some point. We got a surprising amount of produce out of a very small space this year... or at least until the squash bugs killed most of it in the heat of the summer. 
Right now we have a fall garden with a lot of bok choy, chard, and lettuce, some carrots, and peas which probably won't bear.
Surrounding our beds we have a hedge of blueberry bushes, a long asparagus bed (which needs edged), and another hedge of blackberry bushes that we're going to try to grow on wires.
Our plans to mix in flowers and ornamental beans didn't quite materialize this year, but... maybe next year. My dh is going to be planting apple trees shortly... he ordered 10. 
I'll try to get outside and take some pictures in the next couple of days! Looking forward to reading about y'all's gardens, plans - etc.! |
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I forgot to mention in my original post that we have grape vines (muscadines and scuppernongs) planted along the fence, and flanking either side of our "gate" (we had to cut a hole in the fence) are two elderberry bushes. I really want to (somehow) install an arch there, and next year I hope to add more ornamental plantings.
Those two big leafless trees you can see in the gate picture are both pecans. I went out and checked them today and the pecans are ripe. (The boys cracked some for us, and they're very sweet!) Not sure how we're going to get them out of the top of the trees, though!!
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Angela
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Nov 14 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged
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I'm wondering what kind of wood you used to build your potager, Angela?
Also, did you amend your soil?
And...do you have invasive bermuda like we do? Did you line your beds with weed block at all?
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Jen Mackintosh
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Angel
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| Posted: Nov 14 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged
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The beds are just built out of untreated pine, Jen. It was cheap and easily available, but I'm sure we'll have to replace it eventually. Weed block might have been something we should have used but we didn't. I think a lot of our weed problems came from the horse manure we inherited anyway. We don't have a lot of Bermuda because the field is mainly weeds at this point, but I was just reading something about dealing with Bermuda that involved putting down cardboard to kill the grass, then mulching heavily. We've had good luck in our beds with mulches. We used straw and leaves.
The soil is heavily amended. The clay here is as hard as a rock in dry weather. We inherited a barn full of what was essentially composted horse manure, so we used as much of that as we could. We also had a truckload of compost and topsoil brought in . The very first thing we built after moving in, though, was a compost pile. By this summer we had compost, so we added that to the beds, and now we also have chicken litter. When we build the new beds, we'll probably have to have another truckload of dirt brought on.
Oh, and another thing Andy did was to collect all the pine needles that blow into our yard from our neighbor's trees. He used them to mulch the blueberries.
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Angela
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Nov 15 2011 at 7:33am | IP Logged
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I really love how using Mel's Mix from Square Foot Gardening in raised beds meant we had maybe two weeds in each bed a week to pick. Seriously, no weeds.
However, I can imagine that letting things go to seed might mess that up so that you would get more over the years???
It isn't cheap to mix; though, you can add compost each year rather than replacing it. Does using a ground cover increase your weeds after its been put under?
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Angel
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| Posted: Nov 15 2011 at 7:46am | IP Logged
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CrunchyMom wrote:
| Does using a ground cover increase your weeds after its been put under? |
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You mean, like a cover crop -- clover or buckwheat, etc?
It depends on the cover crop. If you grow buckwheat, you have to turn it under when it makes flowers. If you let it go to seed (which it does fast), you will have a new weed. I've heard rye can be really invasive, so we don't use it.
We use clover most often. Crimson clover in particular is really beautiful when it blooms, it's excellent for the soil, and so I don't really mind a few extra volunteers here and there. It doesn't become invasive. Also, bees like clover, so if you have some in your garden, I'd just consider it a bee magnet, not a weed .
We have much less trouble with weeds since we have been gardening with raised beds and a trucked in soil-mix. The one weed that seems to get into all the beds is ground ivy... which is not a weed to some people. When we visited a Shaker homestead in NY, they had some growing in their garden. Apparently the Shakers grew it for medicinal purposes.
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Angela
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CrunchyMom
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Well, WE think its a weed . We have a lot of English ivy, and it is very invasive. In planting bulbs this Fall, I had the boys help me clear the beds, and my oldest will likely forever hate English ivy. He was telling his father how much he disliked it because it was so much work to pull all the roots out
But yes, I meant cover crop rather than ground cover. Good to know about the clover. 
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Mackfam
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We use crimson clover as our primary cover of choice as well. And buckwheat which, as Angela said, does have to be turned under before it flowers. But crimson clover is our cover crop of choice.
I suppose every region has their own invasive weed. For us it is creeping Bermuda. Bermuda is a tenacious creeper and will push up through asphalt if it wants to. So, it's my biggest concern here. We'll build our boxes, line them with weed block paper (something like this which you can find in just about any hardware store or gardening catalog) which doesn't ensure that no weeds come up from the bottom, but does give us a fighting chance for the first year. We're also going to layer cardboard on the bottom and sides when we fill them to help. Bermuda is TOUGH and once it's in there, it's hard to get it out!
I like Mel's Mix too, Lindsay, and we used it when we did some container gardening, but it would be too expensive for us to use in our potager.
We must have similar soil composition to y'all, Angela. Ours is red clay. And while it isn't supposed to be a good place to garden, my front gardens (Mary garden and herb garden) are so prolific and lush that I think there's something to be said for that mineral rich soil! It is HARD STUFF and you do have to use a pick ax to dig it. I always get so jealous when I watch gardening shows and you lucky New Englanders just dig right in to your gardens/yards/soil with a hand trowel!! If I want to dig a 3 inch hole, I will be swinging the pick-ax! Good for upper body strength though!!! And....in our drought prone and super hot summers the clay must really help the plants survive by holding the water in! I really can't explain the (accidental) success I've had in my front gardens in any other way. I'm telling you - those gardens are Eden-lush! And I don't water, fertilize - NOTHING! Ok. That's a tangent.
We may have to do untreated pine for cost, but we're really hoping to build the boxes out of cedar. I'm just not sure how many we'll get built this year.
I really, really like mulching with pine needles in some areas and we have NO pine trees!!! I have got to get some little pine trees going! My in laws have a big pine in one of their pastures though and I hope to get the needles from that to mulch for a while!
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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JennGM
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Can't say about your flowers, Jen, but herbs are the easiest to grow. That's why I love them. Plunk them in the ground (and we have the red clay here, too) and they grow no matter what.
Our pine boxes did break down after a few years.
Love your pictures, Angela! Just gorgeous!
We should have two threads -- potagers in city/suburban yards and ones in the country. I have minimal space, dh is not ready to give up all his yard, and we have HOA. So I can dream big, but it's not going to happen. Every day we regret that we didn't get that house on 5 acres.  Sigh.
Hate English Ivy. It's a fun little study to teach the kids about invasive and non-native plants. All sorts of pretty booklets and books readily available that help them identify. E. Ivy is one -- so it makes it more fun to yank it out knowing you are getting rid of an invader.
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Grace&Chaos
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JennGM wrote:
| Hate English Ivy. It's a fun little study to teach the kids about invasive and non-native plants. All sorts of pretty booklets and books readily available that help them identify. E. Ivy is one -- so it makes it more fun to yank it out knowing you are getting rid of an invader. |
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Ditto, we removed all of ours on the side incline, but our neighbor still has theirs. It's coming back 
Here's a question for everyone. Do you have any problems with animals? We have a huge problem with rabbits, gophers. We live at the top of a hill and behind us is all hill open space. I'd love to use my book for more than just a cofffee table display. Any time we try anything; it gets pretty much eaten up as soon as it sprouts or right before it can be picked.
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Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
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CrunchyMom
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Grace&Chaos wrote:
JennGM wrote:
| Hate English Ivy. It's a fun little study to teach the kids about invasive and non-native plants. All sorts of pretty booklets and books readily available that help them identify. E. Ivy is one -- so it makes it more fun to yank it out knowing you are getting rid of an invader. |
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Ditto, we removed all of ours on the side incline, but our neighbor still has theirs. It's coming back
Here's a question for everyone. Do you have any problems with animals? We have a huge problem with rabbits, gophers. We live at the top of a hill and behind us is all hill open space. I'd love to use my book for more than just a cofffee table display. Any time we try anything; it gets pretty much eaten up as soon as it sprouts or right before it can be picked. |
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Yes, hence my giant fence picture
We don't have rabbits since we have a lot of fox around (including a family living under our shed), but in our city yard we had a groundhog problem (multiple groundhogs that would eat entire sections of the garden down to the ground!), and here, we see multiple deer a day in our yard coming in very close to our house (as in, one walked up behind my husband and practically tapped him on the shoulder as he worked on our patio one evening). I don't know many people around here who bother to garden without a fence. Growing up in Alabama, my parents had an extensive garden in the country and never needed a fence, but here on the East Coast, the animals are a real problem.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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JennGM
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We have rabbits, squirrels (they do the worst damage), and birds. I put up chicken wire around the boxes, but it's not keeping the rabbits out of the strawberries. We decided to let them have them this year. I used to imagine them lying on their backs and just sitting there with berries hanging into their mouths. The netting kept the birds out, though.
You have to have high fences for deer. My MIL has regular visitors in her back yard and they just do a standing jump over the fence. Even the little fauns. It's amazing.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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Mackfam
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We have deer, rabbits, coyote.  They are a real problem.
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Jen Mackintosh
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CrunchyMom
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JennGM wrote:
You have to have high fences for deer. My MIL has regular visitors in her back yard and they just do a standing jump over the fence. Even the little fauns. It's amazing. |
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I know!! I think it needs to be around 7 feet to keep deer out! I don't find tall fences nearly so charming as shorter ones But, I'm just planning to plant lots of climbing roses and such to make it work for me
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Cover Crops: Add Some Oomph to Your Soil
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Jen Mackintosh
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Potager Plans
