A Crunchy Viking Garden

Yesterday my mom and dad came for a visit and I took a break from cloth diaper sewing to put the garden in. Of course, it had to be the hottest June day on record (42C with the humidex) but that was they only day my mom could get off work. We managed by taking dd in periodically to cool down. Even at 22 months old, dd was very helpful, and my mom had her pulling weeds and carrying plants and putting pots away; it was really adorable.

I always forget to do a 'before' picture, so here's the finished product:

We have a really big backyard with lots of space for gardens. My mom and I widened this garden by about a foot and a half when dh and I moved into the house; it wraps all the way around to the other side of the deck. The marigolds are there not for looks but to keep bunnies and other critters from eating up our veggies - pest control pioneer stylz. There's also basil here and there to protect the other plants from bugs as well as disease. Also cuz I love basil.

So we've got carrots and dill:

Onions (and maybe some odd chives):

Then three patches of assorted lettuces, mesclun and mustard greens and spinach:

Radishes (seeds):

And then the herb and overflow patch. Right now there's oregano, garden thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary and some extra lettuce:

I planted all the marigolds (we had to send my dad back to Home Depot twice to get more flats) and my mom did the rest (the big, bushy oregano and lemon thyme have been in the garden since last year) so that I could go into the house with dd when she got too hot. My mom has the constitution of a well-seasoned draught animal, and is just as stubborn - no one is going to make her stop before SHE wants to.

We also have a bit raspberry patch (or line, as it were) that I partially killed off this year by burning it with too much manure (DOH):

Yeah, that empty patch in the middle there is my fault. Oh well, who knew? There's a big tree on the other side of the fence and the roots run right under that part of the raised bed, and you could tell they were stealing the nutrients away from the raspberry stalks, so I dumped some manure on them (nothing I haven't done before), but maybe because the bag had been sitting outside for like a year, it was too strong... at any rate, we had to cut them all down.

At least the one end is still nice and bushy:

We've also got another little garden on the other side, with more lemon thyme (it was supposed to be garden thyme but was mislabeled), chives and mint (that's always trying to take over and is always mostly succeeding):

The lemon thyme here is also from last year. The chives were planted a couple of years ago, and the mint was there long before we ever moved into the house.



And then at the foot of the deck opposite the big garden, we have a strawberry patch. We finally put a cage on it this year because the robins have been pecking holes in all our strawberries:

Close up of some berries forming:

It rained last night so everything got a good watering. And in a few weeks, we can go out and 'pick a salad' every evening for dinner. Yum!