Tag: urban garden

Garden Stage III

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The garden is planted, save a second row of carrots, bush beans, lettuce, and some spinach (though it’s late for that, I know).

The trellis went up and we put out all of the starts where we wanted them to go.  My hope is that the climbing plants wind their way up the bamboo poles to make a structural focal point for the garden.  I also conscientiously picked plants that have unusual colors or feature to add interest.  For example, the cucumber is an extra long variety, and the pole beans are purple with purple leaves.  There’s a purple and white striped eggplant, a patch of rainbow chard,  and I planted a variety of tomato colors, in the hopes that when everything grows it will be an explosion of color to rival a flower garden.  Of course, that all depends on whether anything grows or not, since I didn’t pay any attention to how these plants do in Denver.  I purchased all of my starts from a neighborhood woman who grows them organically in her backyard.  Everything that I got from her last year grew amazingly well despite the crappy location.  I think it’s because she spends a lot of time hardening off the plants, so when they go into the ground outside they’ve got a better shot at making it.  (Local folks, if you want her info leave a comment or send me a note and I’m happy to pass it along.)

Clearly, the girl was impressed by my brilliant idea.  Her basic function during the planting was to act as reluctant cheerleader, occasional digger, and mostly a general hindrance.  But then she’d give you this super cute face and you couldn’t possibly be upset with her.

The boy helped by planting dahlias in the center section:

As for things growing, the pea sprouts from a few weeks ago are up to a good start:

And the final layout of plants ended up like this:

Oops, I forgot to add the spinach in the center of the trellis.  I read somewhere that you can put spinach in the middle of a trellis arrangement because it’s shaded and keeps the ground cool and prevents the spinach from bolting early.  It’s worth a shot since I’ve got the seeds anyway.  I put dwarf sunflowers and zinnia as well as flowering chives along the walkway to have flowers along the path, and also to grow some cutting flowers.  I’d love to have flowers in front of my house I could snip anytime I wanted to brighten up the house or take to a friend’s as a bouquet.

We looked into some grass borders as suggested to keep the grass from encroaching into the garden, but everything I found needed to be dug in before we had planted, and it was too late for that.  Ah well.  That just means more ripping out of grass this year and remembering to do it next year.

And now waiting, watering, occasional fertilizing, and crossing fingers! I’ll try to post picture updates every 2 weeks or so to follow how things are progressing.

Garden, Stage II

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Next step for the garden was irrigation. Now, I know there were some comments about stripping the grass out, but I’d like to leave that in for a couple reasons, one of which is so that the entire area doesn’t turn into a mudpit in the fall.  We had a suggestion to border the lawn with plastic edging to keep it from spreading, and I think I’ll try that.  I realize it may send out creepers, but we’ll deal with that when we get there.

Also, one commenter (thanks, Susan) had me running for the geiger counter, but I’ve since been talked off the ledge.  I haven’t gotten the lead testing done yet, though it’s somewhere in the list of things to do.

Here’s how it looks now!

I think it sort of looks like Medusa now, or a bacterium with pili.

One thing is for sure.  Anything I plant will get a GOOD drenching.

The individual little tubes put out 2 gallons a MINUTE, which seems like a whole lot of water to me. Once plants start coming up, we’ll adjust them to water right at the base.

The spray heads around the center spray the grass and do a decent job of soaking the middle, too.

If we need to, we can put another soaking tube into the middle.  I’m a little concerned that the grass sprayers are going to spray the leaves of the plants in the center and hurt them, but then I remember that that’s basically how I watered the same plants all last year and they survived.

Once all this was in, we put in some seeds! Carrots, peas, and lettuce.

Hopefully the next pictures will be of some little sprouts coming up and the starts going in!

Garden–Help!

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Remember last year, when I talked about putting the garden in the front yard?  Well, the time has come to start! We’ve ripped out most of the sod, leaving some grass in to act as a path.

And by “we,” I clearly mean Eric.

Here’s the thing–the way I approach most things is just to start them and figure it out as I go along.  I’m not much of the planning sort.  This has tended to be how I do just about everything–knitting, parenting, and this garden.  So far it’s worked out, but I’m realizing now I don’t really know much about how this will work! So I’m asking those of you out there who are much better gardeners than  me for some advice.  Here’s the front lawn as it is now, picture taken at 10:30 AM:

I definitely envision a squash/cucumber tepee in the center (#12), and some shade flowers or lettuce in #1 and #13, which will be pretty along the walk.  But what to do with the other sections?  Each one is about 3′ x 3′ in a wedge shape and the sun is coming from the south.  I know it doesn’t seem like a ton of sun, but we got decent veggies in our backyard last year and that patch only gets about 4 hours of direct sunlight daily and this is much more.  Some shade is cast by a large pine tree that we’ll be trimming, so I’m not worried about that. (I am worried, though about thieves,  animal and human.)

Thoughts? Suggestions? Am I crazy? Anyone else out there with a front lawn veggie garden and how did it go?