Winter Gardens - Photos

I know that I am guilty of only wanting to post pretty pictures, or if ugly, to get help on a disease/pest I may have.  Well, I'm showing everyone my Ugly winter garden.  I still have clean-up, reseeding of the Fescue lawn, storing items, raking, etc. to do.

From the East to the West:
From the West to the East:
West side yard (also used for storage):

You do yourself an injustice, sanderson. Luckily most of my stuff is covered with snow.

HA!  One of the jokes on my to-be-posted list:

""There's one good thing about snow; it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor's!"

Just looking at your pictures, Sanderson and remembering just how much you have added this year.  It's an amazing amount of work and looks so beautiful winter or summer!  

Here in California, rain makes my weeds look as pretty as my neighbor's lawn !

Here's my winter garden pictures.  We're overdue for our first frost so much of this could be gone overnight but right now it just keeps growing on.  

This is a table top and I need to remake the strings or do a grid for it (add to the to do list!)  A plum tomato that has been absolutely wonderful this year.  I eat them for breakfast as I check out the garden!  There are a lot of lettuce and radish seedlings in this that you can't see very well as they're still small.  Green onions that volunteered from last year's crop in the same square so I'm letting them grow and one Broccoli:



The greenhouse is still a mess.  At the far end is a cucumber that has a black mildewy something on it.  I have to rip it out and am spraying neem weekly right now to take care of the powdery mildew to keep it in check as things are cool and damp.



Growing also in the greenhouse are a mexican zucchini and a snow fairy tomato (will grow in temps down to 28 degrees as long as you keep frost off of it):


Also in the greenhouse, a tomato that produced fruit all winter long last year and is still alive 20 months after it was first planted!  Swiss Chard and Kale:


Potatoes that were too small to eat simply were replanted in the same garden and this is the result.  I'm not sure what will happen after our freezes, but often we don't have hard freezes so they might keep growing or die back and start early next spring.  I planted in the fall last year in these beds and harvested them early so it's an experiment in progress:


These tomatoes are about 15 feet by 10 feet sprawling.  One is a purple cherokee that I have had terrible success with any fruit this year, as they were all cracked, diseased and nasty.  If these ripen they'll be my first decent ones.  I won't plant them again.  Then the other plant is an italian plum tomato.  


More tomatoes at the other end of the garden along with potatoes and zucchini.  I pulled a two pound zucc from this single plant (5 stems growing) yesterday.  Behind and above are garlic and cabbage.


Chinese cabbage, broccoli and snow peas:

NEXT YEAR'S NEW GARDEN IN PROGRESS
I discovered I have sandy loam as base soil which is the best for growing in, so I've been using the Back to Eden garden approach to save on water, keep the roots cool in the summer and the weeds down.  It accomplishes the same goals as my SFG beds as virtually no weeds grow and what does is easily removed.  Also the soil does not pack down if you walk on it so no tilling required.  All of my non-SFG gardens have all been started with 2-3 inches of home made compost on top of the soil and then 6-8" of ramial wood chips (branches smaller than 3 inches with leaves, chipped)

This section of garden is going to be 4 foot wide beds about 25 feet long.  It's serving as a berm that catches the run off from the hill and should soak up much of the water.  I've laid down a thick layer of home made compost, then am layering garden trimmings as plants die, straw, scavenged really broken down dead oak carcass chips, aged horse manure,  freshly chipped tree trimmings from my chipper shredder and sea weed.  

All of that will break down during the winter and compost in place.  I'll top off the new soil in the spring with 6 inches of wood chips.  All together right now it's about 18-20 inches high and should be about 6-8 inches or more deep when finished.  I experimented with this approach last winter and one of my most productive sections of garden was prepared in this manner.  



I wanted to see how things were breaking down so I turned over about a foot deep and there were probably 50 giant earthworms in a fork full.  They were busy breaking it all down for me and getting fat in the process! 

I'll show pictures next year.

This getting to be a  Confessional.
Audrey.jeane, I think only a real gardeners like us will really appreciate your last picture, and see what goodies there are for a lovely future.  Your rather ugly duckling will be a beautiful swan next year and I look forward to side-by-side pictures.

Kelejan wrote:This getting to be a  Confessional.
Audrey.jeane, I think only a real gardeners like us will really appreciate your last picture, and see what goodies there are for a lovely future.  Your rather ugly duckling will be a beautiful swan next year and I look forward to side-by-side pictures.

You made me smile - I'll have to remember to label this my "Swan Garden" next spring 

It is pretty ugly everywhere in my yard right now - but it's so nice to be able to work out in 60 degree temps and get the hard work out of the way after working in 100+ all summer long!!!!!

Audrey, I am so jealous with your space. Lots of MM TTs plus built-up organic material for row gardening. And, you have done all of this in how many months?

Yes, rain makes things look so green, and clean.

sanderson wrote:Audrey,     I am so jealous with your space.  Lots of MM TTs plus built-up organic material for row gardening.  And, you have done all of this in how many months?

Yes, rain makes things look so green, and clean.

SPACE we have plenty of!!!  That does have a trade off as it means weeds where I don't show you the pictures, especially after the last two soaking rains LOL!

I had to really think about how long it's been... I started gardening in the spring/early summer of 2011. All I had was one 5' x 10' raised bed that we made and some oversized pots.  Late that fall we added the 3, 4x4 table tops.  Spring 2013 we started adding all of the additional gardens, so that's 18 months or so.  Last fall we added the greenhouse.

This fall we added my two new, 4x8 raised SFG beds that will give me an additional 64 squares to play with as well.  And I'm converting the area that I've had straw bale gardens in into the 4x25 space in the picture.  It's been easy work and is my "exercise program" since my job as an artist and designer is so sedentary.  I desperately needed to add physical work to my daily schedule and the garden fits that bill nicely.  Hubby is disabled so it's pretty much mostly me and his engineering prowess when needed 

For clarity's sake, I don't think I would call what I'm doing so much "row gardening," as Mel's original SFG system prior to his inventing the Mel's Mix soil.  I utilize all of the principles I learned from Mel's SFG books.  I use the plant spacing, get large amounts of produce from small garden sizes, use minimal watering for the yield, walk only in designated pathways and have all the benefits of no weeds, no till, no fertilize (other than add compost and the occasional organic amendments).  So it's still the "lazy woman's" gardening system Mel taught us.  

When I wanted more garden space than my budget would allow, I decided to see how productive my soil was.  It turns out that my soil is sandy loam and is really good on its own.  Once I started adding a lot of organic material it just made it even better!  I plant equivalent to SFG spacing on the smaller items, with a maximum bed size of 4 feet wide so there are narrow walking paths through those gardens though you don't really see them.  

The wood chips keep the inbetween space from compacting and since I have a lot of room for the larger items to sprawl, I give them lots of room and don't crowd them.  I have found the nutritional basis of the soil is very close to what my MM is.  Probably because of the compost I make and add in addition to the break down of the heavy mulch and worms.

I know it's not really row gardening.  I just couldn't use the B word.  If I did the math correct, you have 162 sq. ft. of SFG beds.  About twice what I have in usable beds.

Folks, we showed ours. Now, please show yours!

It's raining today & really nasty...  Sorry...

(That's my story & I'm sticking to it!!)

AtlantaMarie wrote:It's raining today & really nasty...  Sorry...

Supposed to be sunny tomorrow with a high of 61*F.  Woot, Woot.
No excuses after tomorrow.

sanderson wrote:I know it's not really row gardening.  I just couldn't use the B word.  If I did the math correct, you have 162 sq. ft. of SFG beds.  About twice what I have in usable beds.

Folks, we showed ours.  Now, please show yours!

  Yeah people, we put out ugliness out there, it's your turn now!

I posted my winter veggie pictures in the following thread.
2014 SFG in Brooks Ga - page 10
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t17310p144-2014-sfg-in-brooks-ga#210708

Camp, Nice.

Marie,  Still waiting for a shot of your winter garden.

Camp - winter shows the beautiful "bones" of your garden. It's so nicely laid out!

Thanks!

SUMMER                            WINTER

Beautiful Boffer!  I just love seeing so many different ways of doing beds.  What are your supports under your table tops?

This is our garden last week. Our brassicas are the best we've ever grown . I need to learn how to blanch/freeze broccoli?  anyone? Seems like I over cook it, and it gets all mushy??

For fast and comprehensive information I use stilltasty.com

Boffer, I always enjoy setting your garden!