[ gardening ] :: backyard photos + new bed

I had a busy week in the garden! Check out what I picked up from Lowe's on Tuesday morning:

20 bags of top soil. Oh boy! I had a fabulous morning filling my newly build raised garden beds. I extended an old 4' x 4' bed to be a 4' x 20' bed. First, I dug out the clay soil and put down a layer of newspaper. Do miserly gals pay for weed-barriers or landscaping fabric? Heck no.

Next, I mixed in a layer of compost and topsoil, and then spread about 6" of topsoil on top. You can see that my bush beans are loving it!

The Garden Inspection Team approved. Norman peed on my bush beans. Hopefully the extra Nitrogen will do them well. 

Emma (front) & Norman (back) inspecting the new bed.

Update: The bush beans loved being urinated on. They started blooming this week and have cute little 1" bean pods.

 

In other news, the first round of fall crops are starting to sprout. These baby radishes better hurry up and grow into something delicious. I can't wait to roast them, or slice them thin into salads!

The September strawberries are blooming, so we should have a few pints of fresh berries soon. Unless Norman and the birds eat them again! I didn't get to harvest any berries in May because my weird dog loves fruit.

The carrots are sprouting, too. I'm doing what I call "The Carrot-In-A-Bucket Experiment." Once they get a little bigger, I'll thin them out so we can eat the young carrot roots and carrot tops. Delish!

Finally, my one lonely Irish Cobbler potato. She'll be going in a potato-tower, so hopefully I can increase my yield of 'taters this fall. We're not big potato eaters, so I might just save the spuds to re-use as seed potatoes in the spring.

Well, that's it for now! Sometime this week I'll pull my tomato plants (they're looking sad) and plant something else in their place. Maybe red cabbage? I need to figure out how to use a few pints of green cherry tomatoes...perhaps a tomato relish, or I could fry them! The basil is starting to get woody as well, so fresh pesto is on the menu this week, too.

- Maggie White