Campcreek
I have been passing by without coming inside to check it out! I have been building up a raised bed near my banana clump. Eventually it will probably be bordered by large size retainer block built up 18" or more. I have compost bins over the root zone of the bananas and they love it. When the bins are full and aged for a while I just raise them and spread it with a hand rake, then a thin layer of fresh dirt over the top. There will be a small greenhouse in the raised bed with flowers and vegetables surrounding it. More bananas will be added around outside of the raised bed.

Oooh! Sounds like a cool plan! Don't you just love dreaming about how to build your garden? I've been doing that for a few years now, but things haven't been right for us to do it. DH is a gardener, too, but his health has stood in our way of doing the gardens we dream of. BUT it looks like that will soon change ~ yeah! (We finally found a good doctor. :)

Anyway, when you say "large size retainer block", what is that? Cinder blocks? Or those cement or cinderblock paver-sort-of-wall-block-thangs you stack to build walls? Those are nice, but we're too broke to afford those. Our "five year plan" for the stone raised bed garden is to end up with somewhere around ninety 3'x20' beds enclosed by a long, continuous bed lining the perimeter fence. That'd cost a bundle if we used anything but plain old rock glued together with some mortar and elbow grease.

What kind of bananas do you have? I'd love to get some Zone 8 hardy banans next year. Don't have the place for them right now, so am happy propagating my Super Dwarf Cavendish 'Novak' banans right now ~ I started with three and have 27. Those things reproduce more than rabbits for me. *snicker* LOVE it!

Hi All! I'll play! I have a small potager where I grow vegies, herbs and flowers for cutting. My DH built it for me several years ago. He cut all the pickets, while I did all the painting. He built the raised beds, too, which I love but am thinking I may want them even higher.

I use soaker hoses on timers for watering. I find they work very well and are easy to move around the plants, if needed. We had a stock tank as a pond in the center, but we've removed it. In its place will soon be another bed with a birdhouse on a post. I do have a small pond with a water pump that I'll be using in the new bed.

We have plans to build a small shed/greenhouse behind the potager. That may be a year or two off, since we have a ton of other projects going on. I'll post a link to my PB album where I have some potager pics.

I hope this becomes a nice forum with friendly folks. I usually frequent the cottage forum where several folks have potagers. I'll let them know about "our" new forum. : )

Diana

Here is a link that might be useful: my potager

Hi potager people!
Thanks for telling me about this, Diana. ;-)

I have a small 2'x8' raised bed that wishes it was a potager. I call it my potager, but that's a bit tounge-in-cheek.

Right now I have sugar snap peas on the trellis, along with some pole beans that need to be taken out. It's time to start new pole bean seeds. I've got some lettuce, one lonely spinach, radishes, carrots and brusselsprout seedlings. Out in the main garden, I have a few tomatoes and peppers scattered here and there. They share real estate with the roses and other perennials. So, my humble garden is not a formal potager. Someday I'd love to have the space for 6 raised beds surrounded by a picket fence with all kinds of salvias and roses as a border around the fence. Then I could have a "real" potager. But, for now, I have my one little raised bed.

I'll put in a link...

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1151050}}

Ahhh Nicki, don't cut yourself short. Your potager is
to die for, your whole garden is to die for.

Edna

Well, well well. It finally happened! I know I was one of those who practically begged for a Potager forum. Thanks for the heads up Diana!

I'm MeMo and I live on a cattle ranch/farm in North Central Nebraska. I've been here for two years transplanted from the big city and beginning a whole new life.

I have had vegie plots in three differnet areas since I've been here...trying to find the best spot. This past year I planted 1/2 of our front yard (next year it will be all flowers!). We had a fabulous return on our investment and time and were blessed with plenty of vegies to put up for the winter. I never in a million years could have dreamed that I could possibly not have enough room in the garden I planted last year but low and behold it happened.

This year we will be redirecting the garden to the back yard where we will be doing a lot of landscaping type things in addition to building raised beds. I will be using raw cedar for my boxes. I have drawn out all the plans for this area on graph paper this winter. The back yard will actually be divided into three sections. Nearest the house will have grass for croquet and badmitten. There will also be a horseshoe pit. At the back of the lawn we are going to install a hedge of shrubs with an arbor in it that will lead to the pottager. I hope to lay out my boxes in a variety of sizes and shapes (being sure that I can reach all the way into them) so that they resemble a quilt pattern (pattern still undecided). At the back of the pottager there will be another hedge of shrubs with an arbor in them that will lead to a small orchard. The orchard will have eight trees with four types of fruit...apples, cherries, peaches and pears. Once I get my boxes built I am planning to use drip irrigation in them. It all looks great on paper...it'll actually take me a few years to put it all together...$$$ LOL!

MeMo

Hi y'all! Nice to meet you, and it is good to see some of my CG friends over here on the new potager forum too. Thanks Diana for the heads up. :)

My backyard is smallish, so currently most of my veggies/herbs are grown in containers on the large patio. I have tomatoes, peppers, and various herbs. I would love to expand my vegies and herbs into the 8 foot beds that surround the house, but it is almost full-up planted with 4 citrus & 4 peach trees, many roses, several lavenders, rose geraniums, daylilies, alstroemerias, irises, gladiolas, and a small (right now) patch of garlic chives planted from seed, etc. There is some very limited space (possibly a couple tomatoes and/or peppers) for a few vegies in the rose garden area. I am concerned about spraying Funginex on roses and having it drift onto edibles nearby (the roses are hybrid teas, and MUST be sprayed 3 or 4 times yearly). Any advice on this welcome.

Becky

Oh MeMo! It sounds so perfect!

Edna, dear, you're too kind! (did you see my big halloween spider on the trellis? It's so funny. I can't take it down... it cracks me up every time I pick beans...)

Diana, someday, I'll be using your potager as inspiration for mine. It is so tidy and wonderful.

Campcreek - the stone idea sounds great. No rotting to worry about, and it's always gorgeous.

Dirt dew - you're growing bananas in Arizona? I went to Tucson a few years back - in April, and I saw the botanical gardens there. I was floored at what could be grown in the desert. What an amazing place.

This a wonderful new forum. I love the Potager idea. Diana, your plot is lovely.

John

Hi John, nice to see you over here. And thanks for the compliment.

Nicki, I just spent the better part of the afternoon tidying up the paths and weeding the beds. They weren't too bad. I think they like that compost I got for them last year.

I hope we get more folks with potagers posting. Maybe we need to spread the word? There must be some folks over on the vegie forums with potagers. Or maybe they just need some enabling ; )

Diana

My thanks to Diana for mentioning this forum over on cottage gardens. I'm not a big talker but I've been around.
I have a pottager in the making. I decided some time last summer that I wanted to enclose my plain old veggie garden and make it more attractive. Let's see if I can describe it for you. There will be a path going all the way down the middle with a four foot by eighteen foot bed on either side. Along the outside of that there will be three foot wide beds shaped like a squared off c. These beds will be thirty feet long with ten foot arms. The paths between these will be three feet wide too. One long side of the garden will be against chainlink fence but the other long side will have a row of raspberries. There are going to be strawberries in there somewhere too but I haven't figured out where yet.

Campcreek, you can go on www.craigslist.com find the city nearest you. Go to the FREE ad. There is tons of stuff on there daily, RR ties, lumber, rocks, broken concrete, old fencing, bricks etc. that you can use in your garden. You just need to jump on it and go pick it up. For free!!
I can't afford to buy this stuff either. I would imagine in spring and summer, there would be even more as people are getting out and replacing fences, patios, driveways etc. Michele

Well, hello everyone! Some of you are very familiar to me; others aren't. Strictly speaking, I probably don't qualify as what you all are calling "potager". I don't have raised beds ; no formal edges; no fencing. What I do have is a garden of vegetables and fruits with flowers here and there. The area consists of one large plot about 30 feet x 90 feet and another one maybe 40 feet by 20 feet.

The west end has been my nursery bed for perennials, next to it east is the strawberry patch, then on east with rows of vegetables (under heavy mulch). One section north is now taken up with a nursery bed for iris and daylilies that were divided last fall.

At the end of all this west, I have a producing cherry tree and the start of a small orchard of plums, apples and peaches. I have a small, very wild blackberry patch. This entire area is surrounded with perennials beds.

Whether I qualify or not, I have enjoyed reading all your posts and enjoyed the pictures. I always get inspiration and wonderful ideas from other gardeners whether it fits my particular style or not. I keep telling myself "vignettes, vignettes!" My overall layout is a bit disorderly, so I am just concentrating on tiny views. Probably a lazy persons way of coping!

I am like some of you in that buying all the materials for the raised beds is more than I want to spend. I find it pretty easy to keep my garden edged with the trusy garden hoe or my rototiller, and the more you mulch, the more raised the bed becomes. It works for me.

I do eventually want to fence the whole area with that old-fashioned double loop top wire so that the chickens (which I am getting this spring) can clean up the area at the end of garden season. I will just start with a small fenced area in the orchard for them.

Happy gardening.

Hi gld! I am happy to see you over here. I always enjoy reading your posts.

As for "qualifying" as a potager, I hope no one gets too hung up on that and feels they can't join in. I realize my stated definition on another thread may imply that a potager should "look" a certain way, but just as in cottage gardening, there's always room for interpretation.

Gardening is nothing, if not personal. What's important is that YOU enjoy the journey along those garden paths.

Now can you send me some of those cherries? My DH loves a good cherry pie. : )

Diana

Awesome little potager, Diana! :) You, too, Niki! CUTE! :)

Memo, you live on a ranch, too? Cool! DH Kenny and I live on 104 acres just west of Austin. We're downsizing to about 70 acres. We've already downsized the herds ~ 48 horses down to about twenty and twenty cattle to about fourteen. LOVE it. I like the sound of your plans, too. I've got some long-range plans for a potager as well. May we both realize our dreams... :) And thanks for hollering for this forum! I think I'm going to like it here. :)

Michele, thanks for the heads up about that site! I saw that site on our local news the other day, but didn't think anything of it. I'll have to keep my eye on it now. Thanks EVER so much again! :)

Hi, GLD! I'm probably one of the ones you don't recognize. I used to be on Gardenweb a lot years ago, but got off track and busy with other things. But Dh and I are back into gardening ~ I get crabby when I can't grow veggies and I've been crabby for two years. I guess DH finally got the hint. *snicker* I know about that old fashioned double loop wire! I have some of it that was around my grandmother's yard. It's so quaint looking, isn't it? :) BTW, I agree with Diana ~ I hope people don't get so hung up on "titles" for your garden that you can't join in. :)

Linda

Linda, would you believe the only place I have found that fencing is at American Fence Co. in Texas! I just love the old, farm look of it. That is just what I have an old farm so it should fit right in.

gld

Morning Campcreek, Yes I live on a ranch. A year ago I was planning a fence around the yard made of the loop wire fencing and I used to have a great link that someone on CG gave me long ago. For some reason I am not able to locate it now. I'll keep searching for it. DH came along and decided to do something completely different so now we will have a cedar split rail fence of sorts with some cedar design work between the rails and then 4x4 woven wire on the inside to keep critters out and grandkids in. The fence process is going along far slower than I would like to see but DH is incredibly busy much of the time as you can imagine. We are in need of lumber for various projects so hopefully...soon...we'll be felling a mess of trees and getting them to the saw mill for cutting. Once we get all the lumber we can hopefully start moving along on all the wood related projects.

MrsG. So happy to see you over here. Your plans sound fantastic! Have you decided yet what you're going to use in your pathways?

Gld, Happy to see you here also. Please stay. You are a wonderful gardener and we can all learn from your experience. Besides much the same as CGing...potager gardening has it's own interpretations and personalized styles. I'd love to learn more about your techniques on various things.

Niki...I love your little potager! I am sooo amazed at all that you pack into it!

MeMo

Ha! Cool, GLD! I did a quick Google search for American Fence Company in Texas and all I got was a fence company that does industrial fencing like prisons and such. Do you happen to have a link to them? I think I might like a bit more of that fence by the time I'm done ~ I"m thinking of using what I have around the yard and I don't think I have enough. Thanks! :)

Wonderful, MeMo! Another country person here, rancher. LOVE it. Oh, yeah ~ I don't have to imagine how busy rancher DHs are. ;) 'Tween me, the horses and the cattle, mine's run ragged all the time. ;)

I had originally wanted that loop fencing for my own garden. It's what my grandmother had surrounding her Victorian home, I love it. However, we couldn't find it! So I have plain old pickets.
Maybe I can get some of this for the potager...

GGG

Hello all:)

Memo,

Look south, I'm waving at you:) ( I live somewhere south of memo in Nebraska.) I love the plans that you are making, they sound great. Don't forget to go to the nursery in O'Neill, they start all the plants there, call them and ask for a tour, we went with the school kids in May and got to see all the pointsetta's that they start each year.

Nicki,

Your pics are making me drool. Believe it or not I went out and dug some carrots that I forgot last summer, I even added to a garden bed, digging down deeper. But now I see we are getting snow tomorrow, glad I left all the leaves in place. So I am jelous about growing veggies right now:(

I think that I have the start of a potager in my front yard. I have a space that is bordered by the sidewalk and driveway on all 4 sides. I dug out all the grass and have strawberries, dill, fennel, will have lettuce and radishes come spring. I hope to figure out more to add, but it is kinda shady.

Stacie
potager-wannabe

Hey Stacie! Snow or no...I'm planting tulip bulbs tomorrow. Should have done it today but had to drive to town to return some library books. We are going to have to get together this summer. Your not pregnant..I'm not sick. We should set a date. Do you have a hotel in that little town? I'd love to see what you're up to in that garden of yours. We went for a bike ride over to O'Neil last fall and we walked around that nursery for a bit. Wrong time of year though. Most of what they had was nearly spent, but they still weren't marking down anything. I was amazed at how many hoop houses they have there. Have to go back in the spring. Glad to see you over here at the Potager.

MeMo

Campcreek, sorry. that link should end .org

Here is a link that might be useful: craigs list

Campcreek, google for

double loop fencing

I got several sites under that search.

Memo,

Will email you, We do have a hotel in our small town, but would love to have you stay with us. I did a yahoo map search, and sure enough we are exactly south of you;)Not pregnant this year so hope to get lots done in the garden.

Stacie

Thanks, Michele! :)

And you, too, Nona. :) Luckily someone already posted some links directly to the fence at American Fence Co. on another thread! :)

Nicki
Phoenix is in the desert?
Oh, I guess you are right. We logged day 111 without a trace of measurable rain at Sky Harbor International Airport today.
I AM growing bananas in the desert. The large clump has 4 flower stalks right now. The oldest opened the first bract on Cinco de Mayo.(May 5) It has been producing new flowers for over 9 months now.
Campcreek
I posted a thread on the banana forum for Musa Balbisiana with a link to some information on this strong growng seeded variety. The flower bud with bright red bracts is big and beautiful. The hummingbirds love it! The male flowers keep coming and they are loaded with nectar.
The blocks I want are precast concrete that interlock to stack for retaining walls. They can be restacked to modify a raised bed anytime. I will be checking with a local supplier to see if I can get a better price for a quantity deal. Who knows?

Hello All,

I am new to this forum, as this forum is new itself. Ive been floating around GW for about a year now and mostly find myself in seed swaping and wintersowing. I absolutely love this forum, you all seem so nice and close nit. I would say that I have a potage, I have an aprox 15x15 veggie/herb garden surrounded by a wood fence hubby built for me. Attatched is a flowing garden of perennials and fruit trees (My babies, 1 plum, 1 pear, 2 cherries)with stone pavers. Attatched to that is a herb/woodland little area. I love my garden, but its in the city. Id rather be out in the country, anyways whenever I get a pic I will post.
Gloria in Colorado

Campcreek,my best friend lives in Dripping Springs. I'm just n. or you and have 88 acres. We have a veggie garden all in raised beds plus my garden in the back is interplanted w/all my roses,perennials,annuals and veggies and fruits. I like having the veggies as they have great texture. My DH has spoiled me w/garden structures and a wonderful shed. He loves to garden w/me.
hilary

Hi all - I think this may be where I belong (among other places, like edible landscaping). Ive always had a preponderance of edibles in my gardens, but since theyre now moving into areas conventionally considered "public" and "ornamental", Im paying more attention to making them look attractive as well. I may never have a dedicated, separate, potager, but the techniques and style are applicable, I think, to any sort of relatively formal landscaping.