The garden progress

The garden is complete... for now. As I said in the last post, we used a method described in Mother Earth News which is to lay newspaper down to smother out the grass and weeds and then pile compost and wood chips directly on top as seed/plant beds and walkways, respectively.

Here is our work in progress. The fence was constructed maybe a year or so ago from discarded pallets. The compost was retreived from one of my old student's family who has horses. The vines/trellis/PVC in the back are our grapevines. In front of the "fence" are pots of various cuttings, pineapple tops, our pumpkin, watermelon, sunflower and eggplant seeds, herbs, etc. In this picture we were waiting for wood chips to be delivered- free, of course, from a connection with a stump removal business. Turns out is would be 2 more weeks before that mulch would arrive. The newspaper was blown to hither and yon, but now its done and here it is:

Grass is showing strong and has broken through our newspaper barrier, but I'm hopeful that the ground covers planted in each bed will be up to the challenge to snuff it out. Most beds also have a "nitrogen fixer", right now being pumpkins to help improve the soil. Come fall we'll be also planting peas and beans to be our N-fixers. This is all part of a fascinating subject called "permaculture"- how to grow a ton of food in very small spaces.

So, in this garden lies: 2 varieties of pumpkin, 1 of watermelon, 2 of tomatoes, 1 of sorghum, 1 of strawberries, 2 of eggplant, 1 of broccoli, 2 of sunflowers, 1 of dill, and 1 of sweet potatoes. And we're salivating while planning our next season!