First Garden at Year 2

Here's my garden. I've never been much of a builder but I'm proud of what I've accomplished here. This is my 25x20 or so deer fence enclosed garden. Those are 4x8x1 boxes. I built the table too which was a lot harder than the rest! The sort of green roof thing on the far left is a little tool house I built to store tools and gloves and such. It's attached to the door post.

The fence is 8' high. Yes, deer can jump.

Last year I made WAY TOO MUCH food. This year with better planning and hopefully some successful attempts at preservation a lot less will end up in compost.

(One of my bird cages is on end in this picture right in front of the north west box. Sorry!)

That's my perennial fruit box there on the right with three kinds of strawberries (Rainer, Tri-Star and Seascape) and four blurberries (two Top Hats and two North Sky).

The blueberries were a huge hit, so the other box got four of its own this year (two more Top Hat and two North Country). It's also got four staggered feet of radishes, my herb garden (trying again, didn't work last year) and four feet of onions under the bird cage.

The far boxes all have steel conduit, nylon net trellises. The middle has snow and snap peas sprouting right now, and the front has spinach and lettuce coming in. The far left box is partially dug out for potatoes. Nothing's actually under that green house yet as it's only been finished today. I'll test it for a week of wind and if it works try tomatoes, chiles and such again. The front of that box has four feet of mixed carrots on the near side, and six feet of broccoli down the middle.

Wish me luck!

EDIT: The story behind that green house can be found here.

An absolute awesome set up you have going on navajas. I am going to have to study your layout in depth to see how many ideas I can steal from you

If you don't have the best of results from that, none of us will. You have a truly great looking garden.

Wow, thanks a lot. I love being in that garden all times of year.

There was no secret to the design believe me. I based everything on lumber size so I'd have to make as few cuts as possible. Like I said, I'm no carpenter / builder. So, the east/west walls are all 8' 2x4s, the north is 10'ers and the south, the door, not pictured, is two 8'ers from each side, and I just used whatever that remaining space was to build in the door. That ended up a nice big entrance which is nice for the wheel barrow, moving those cages and green house in and out, etc...

The boxes too. All based on lumber with few or no cuts.

That philosophy obviously didn't carry over to the the table and tool house thing, but those came a year later!

Wow that is some setup you have going on! Nicely done!

Now that is a fabulous garden. The layout and organization looks beyond reproach. Took me a minute to understand the "bird cages"; but I can be slow .
JOB WELL DONE

Thanks for the kind words!

Here's a couple shots of what I mean by bird cage. Not sure what else to call them. I only have two but just move them around as I plant. They're in the background there to the west.


The bumpy one is the one that was squashed because of my first failed green house attempt. I don't think I actually had much loss to birds last year but I figured why not?

I also snapped some pics of the other two hidden features in the original picture, my water supply and the little tool house I built. It stores my and my kids' gloves, some scissors, trowel, etc...

Oh. And there's the compost bin I built behind it. I suck at composting.

Beautiful! Is the green house portable or fixed? Just the nicest layout.

I like it .. that old saying come to mind ..
" If it looks good it will be good ", the thought and care you put into things comes right through .

It's amazing how the first years learning curve skyrockets and fills your head for all your waking hours .
This year coming will be a much more relaxed less frenetic time giving you more time to enjoy your labours & eat the rewards .

Are you finished making beds & sticking with what you've got or do you think you will make more of them for the perennial crops ?

and neat! That gravel just finishes it off so well. Mine looks like a giant weed pit right now. After amending the soil in the row garden part of mine, we have the most beautiful, lush, tall green grass growing. #1 son had to cut it down with the weed eater, rake it up then feed it to the goats before he could even begin to till to get ready to plant. At least the goats were happy about it.

sanderson wrote:Beautiful! Is the green house portable or fixed? Just the nicest layout.

Oh it's portable. It's just held there against the wind by three eye hooks, two our typical windward (West) and one on the other side. It looks nice, I just hope it holds up and actually works!

plantoid wrote:Are you finished making beds & sticking with what you've got or do you think you will make more of them for the perennial crops ?

Well I'm certainly done with what I'll fit into this enclosure. I might be making some boxes to go around the outside to hold some decorative plants that deer won't eat. (There aren't many.) I situated the North wall of the fence so that later I wanted/needed to, I could extend the whole garden one or two box lengths North, but that was before my massive crop last year. I think this size will be fine.

However, I would like an orchard (also deer magnets). I think a similar enclosure for it would be the way to go. I might do that at some point.

kat51415 wrote:and neat! That gravel just finishes it off so well. Mine looks like a giant weed pit right now. After amending the soil in the row garden part of mine, we have the most beautiful, lush, tall green grass growing. #1 son had to cut it down with the weed eater, rake it up then feed it to the goats before he could even begin to till to get ready to plant. At least the goats were happy about it.

Believe me, weeds come. My ground is layered with two sheets of landscape fabric in most places and covered with that gravel. Grass and weeds still find a way. I just have to walk around and pull them out every couple months. They come up really easy in most places because they can't root very well.

Also, I got stiffed by the gravel company. I had the math and volume worked out well, and there's no way I got my whole order. You can see how sparse it is towards the front. On the other hand, the soil company dropped off WAY MORE than I ordered so maybe it evened out. Unfortunately I was away for the gravel delivery and didn't really know my order was shorted until I got everything in place and the gravel spread out. By then it was impossible to really make a stink.

Live and learn!

WOW!!! It looks amazing! For not being a "builder", you did a great job... Mine is a little bit smaller lol... Check out mine... (<-- Link) My wife and I slapped this stuff together and finished it today!! We had to put the little fence around ours, because of our doggie... He likes to dig... Your garden is beautiful!

Thanks for the kind words. Your garden looks great! I have to admit, though they drove me crazy, those wood grids sure do look sharp.

On my end I'm happy to report that the greenhouse box experiment has so far been a surprising structural success. It endured about 20 hours of head on peninsula wind without absolutely no signs of wear or damage. It was a tense day. I kept looking out the window at the sail on our playground flapping at 90 degrees thinking to myself, "There's not way that greenhouse lasts another 15 minutes!". But, nope, the plastic doesn't even appear to have been stressed. I'm amazed and very happy.

Underneath is is warm and moist, so I figured, what the heck and planted the entire 16 feet. It's got four tomatoes, four peppers, some okra, another attempt at my herb garden, some celery, and... Something else I think. Can't remember.

We'll see!

That's awesome! Good Luck!