Backyard Garden

We bought our house 12 years ago, and our backyard was filled with concrete and a giant pool. It lasted one year before we had it filled in because it was a pool, and we live in Maine. Our entire property is only .15 of an acre, and we've always wanted it to be a garden. You can see on this blog a few of the things we've tried with some success. Our first gardens were raised bed square foot gardens with the fluffiest soil we could put together. They looked cute, and they did alright. Those morphed as the wood we used to build the raised beds decayed like they were supposed to. For the past five years, we have had one long raised bed in the back yard. The first year it was full of vegetables, and it was insanely full. The following year we did the same, but weeds took over, and we ignored it. The next year we changed the raised bed into an herb garden, and it was perfect. We grew tomatoes in pots around the driveway and back porch, and the raised bed was full of mints, flower...

This is the first red bell pepper I have ever gotten from my garden! It may be a little green still but I did not want it to get hit by frost. 

It's starting to look like the colors of fall and late-summer, wild morning glories are climbing through the azalea bush looking beautiful first thing this morning.

One big sunflower that came up by surprise in the cucumbers... Cosmos mixed with the tomatoes.. Spearmint flowers  One big green pepper between the cabbage and the celery... Basil Flowers, it needs to be cut and stored before it goes totally to seed!

The garden bed this year is unruly but very bountiful were excited to see it working out so well!

We decided to pull out our small 4x4 squares and make one long garden bed. We lined the bottom with long sticks and wood chip leftovers from splitting firewood to help aid drainage and to compost as the garden grows this year, hopefully keeping the bed warmer into the fall. We will see if it works or not, either way it looks nice!

It feels like we went directly from winter to summer, but it's beautiful outside so no complaining. Lilacs... Crab apple.... Spotted violets...

It's been a long winter, yet it is not over. 

We have not had time to clear out the gardens and have not actually had the killing frost yet, but here's the first snow. The Japanese maple has not even had time to fully change color!

This year our gardens are small but coming along nicely. Mulching the gardens has not only reduced weeding but has also helped keep the moisture in the beds. We tried planting just a few cukes in a large pot and letting them vine instead of spreading out, we have already had several cucumbers and they are easy to see and pick. This year we are letting the big compost pile rest (it is almost perfect soil and will be nice to add to all the gardens later this fall) and picked up a barrel composter. Since we let the old pile rest there must have been some pumpkin seeds from last Halloween that sprouted and we may get some pumpkins, if not it's squash and either way it's great! Left to right: flower bed, morning glories, mint & chives bed, tomato & herbs bed, and the new composter just under the Japanese maple. 3 beds with peppers, different types of tomatoes, basil, oregano, broccoli, marigolds, cilantro, and strawberries. First successful brocc...

The newest addition to the gardens....

We have been getting the compost turned, giving the raised beds some extra composted manure and getting everything ready for the seedlings to go out. Hopefully this weekend we will have everything in the backyard garden and will only have the big garden left to work on. Our lettuces are ready, so our first salad from the garden is coming shortly...the kale and spinach have taken a beating though from the squirrels, for some reason they want to dig them up. I added a lovely aluminum pie plate on a stick to scare them a bit and it works until the plate gets free. I hate having what looks like junk hanging in my garden, but I also don't want the groundhog eating my lettuce and the squirrels digging up my other greens! The seedlings are holding on even though I have had some dampening off and the garlic spray seems to be helping some of them. I was glad that we put in grow lights for them because it has been so cloudy and rainy for the past couple weeks, although you can tell we had s...

 My seedlings have some dampening off this year which is a real bummer. I sprayed them with a garlic spray and some are coming back and some will not make it regardless. So I may nee another trip tot he nursery before I am done with the garden. My tomatoes are holding on, but the cabbage, basil, cilantro, and some of the flowers were hit hard.  Lilac! so beautiful and covered too bad it's all raining during the full bloom... Everything keeps plodding on even though we have not seen the sun for a whole day in well over a week (Last Saturday afternoon with intermittent thunder showers was the best we can hope for apparently) I think that when the sun finally comes out it will be in true Maine fashion and we will be in the midst of  summer.

Seedlings coming up... Apples from seed, not sure what we are actually going to do with them... Lettuce, Kale, Spinach all coming up nicely despite cool temps... Funny little fairy garden under the Japanese Maple is already flowering... It won't be long until the Lilac blooms, it is covered with buds!