That does look tropical! :-) And the tomatoes look vicious - already caged.

One set of beds, at the far end is asparagus, a new raspberry patch, and some rhubarb. This bed has lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, beans, corn, radish, peas, etc.

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The other bed has curcubits, nasturtium, marigolds, giant sunflowers, sorghum, and I forget what else. I didn't mark anything, so it's going to be a suprise to me. :-)

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And the Live Composting Crew / Freckle Pecker Squad is now moved to the garden. Obviously, the run needs work! It needs the real fence put up, but there's already an 8' fence around the whole garden... I don't worry too much if they get out. It is fun because they all pile out to cluck at me about their day, and I toss all the weeds over to them. I also put in a couple of old bags of leaves for them to shred. It will be good stuff to spread out in & till in later this summer. Next year, I think I will grow an alfalfa patch for them. It seems to attract grasshoppers, and if I irrigate it and keep letting them out on it, maybe they will eat more grasshoppers.

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Cheers,
Michelle

I wanted to make a contribution here but have had problems with taking photo's. I started off trying to use my daughter's cell phone - that was nearly a complete miss. Some of you may remember how I once dropped my camera, stepped on it, and gave it brain damage with memory loss! I did finally find the remedy and it has been in service. Camera stuff doesn't usually come naturally to me.

Since there are 3 gardens (not counting the greenhouses and tiny herb garden here at home), I've put things in "thumbnails" so as to limit your downloading.

These 3 pix are really 1 garden occupying part of contiguous lots. Little cutflower garden (I don't know why it came out larger):

Little veggie garden:

Shade corner:

Dad's garden in the early AM, I'll claim since these are my plants. (His tomato patch and bed of salad greens are off on the right out of the picture.) If there are "pot ghettos" this would have to be a "post ghetto" but that's because it is a cutting garden. The dahlias are just breaking the surface on most of the bare ground. The red foliage is on a few rose bushes there in the foreground.:

Now, I'll give you a break and get photo's of the large veggie garden this afternoon.

digit(al camera)S'

Everybody's gardens look great!!

Here are my tiny beds, just starting to pop.

[IMG]http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa158/MonkeyMinkey/P1010774.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa158/MonkeyMinkey/P1010770.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa158/MonkeyMinkey/P1010783.jpg[/IMG]

I don't know how these images will turn up. I assume you'll have to follow the links...

This first one is my first flower bed, the one with the roses. The next one is my second flower bed. It has my new perennials and the seedlings. The third photo is of my Siberian irises who did so poorly last year. This year I bought a Butter and Cream and a Ceasar's Blue to go with it. I think they will make a great contrast of colours.

I call it the large veggie garden but here is the flower corner. The onions and peas are beyond and beyond them are squash, Summer & Winter:

This is another part of the same garden showing a desert-like landscape with tomato plants. After 2 days of reasonable sunshine . . . . I guess I'd better run the sprinklers tomorrow. Beyond are peppers so tiny, you can't see 'em. Then there are kohlrabi, cabbage/broccoli, green beans and sweet corn in the distance.

At a greater distance is a huge pile of rocks and the neigbor's hay barn/boat & motorhome storage building . . . And guess what I saw in there this afternoon - - MY 3 OWLS FROM 2007!! I didn't want to disturb them with the camera but here's their view of the garden from the opposite side:

Kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit
Yo ho to oh! Yo ho to oh! Yo ho...
. . .
Arise storms
North winds blow, south winds blow
Typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, smog
Flash lightning strike the rabbit
Kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit
Yo ho to oh! Yo ho to oh! Yo ho...

I think you mean, Kill the wabbit, don't ya? ;-)

Do you REALLY plant that all by yourself, Digit? Don't you be comin' 'round here tellin' us how old and infirm you are anymore! Just looking at all that makes me tired! (Nice gardens, tho!)

Yours looks good too, Jennifer! But I think you're gonna need to plan for some relocating next year when some of that stuff starts to grow up!

And it's nice to see both of you without snow!

If I ever get my most recent pics downloaded, I'll post a couple. Most of my stuff is still pretty small, but I'm REAL happy with both my veggies and my perennials this year.

Happy summer,
Skybird

I'm wondering what happened to Michelle's finely engineered veggie garden photo's. . ? They aren't showing up on the page any longer.

Well, with the little greenhouse and 2 flats per 100 square feet . . . we can really plant a lot of square feet. And I say we, since DW plays such an important part in every facet of this. In fact, I struggle to include what I'm particularly interested in. I'll put in a tiny, tiny patch of millet and peas today for the chickens . . . that's just an experiment but it is something like that, that keeps me goin'.

Meteor, I think that some of that "tropical" look comes from the Virginia creeper on the fence there. I took it off the backyard tree but will leave it on the (neighbor's) fence in my backyard so as to better obscure their swimming pool. I haven't seen that used once this year but with neighbors like mine . . .

d'S'

I can't see Michelle's pics either! :-( But everything else is off to a good start, I see...lovely gardens, all. :-)

Here are a few of mine - I'll get closer pictures later as they start filling in a bit.

Here are my two veggie beds - the one on the right is new this year. We tried the pop-bottle watering thing, but it didn't work at all, so I need to get all of those out of there. We have the sprinklers set up now.

This is the bed on the left - I have tomatoes planted in back against that fence (that will serve as thier "trellis), peppers in front of those, and basil on the ends.

This is the bed on the right - it's stuffed full with eggplants on the left, tomatoes in the back, cucs in the back right corner, another tomato on the right, and all sorts of hot peppers in the middle. I should have gotten a close-up of my hot portugal pepper...it's got 1 pepper on already, long and green!

The gnome garden is green, unfortunately I couldn't get the baby's breath to show up well (the gnome is surrounded by tiny white flowers). The roses are just getting going, and all have fat buds on them now:

And this is the fountain to the right of the gnome garden...finally splashing merrily along. You can see one of the new thyme plants just behind it in the river - there are 8 of them spaced out, and hopefully they'll spread far and wide.

Finally, the queen of the garden right now, so bright and cheerful - one of our dianthus clumps!

Jamie, I'm guessing that Michelle pulled them off of whatever webhost she was using, after reading that last thread she posted, before it was pulled that is. I wasn't able to view Jclepine's photos either, but I'm sure that was an error on my part though.

Here is a shot of my tiny vegetable garden:

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Makes you want a salad doesn't it?

One of my larger tomato plants, San Marzano:

This is the main perennial bed along the front of the house (before the wind mangled the yarrow on the end):

One of the walkway beds:

My new herb garden, that I just put in this spring (I apologize for the blurry photo):

Thank you everyone, for sharing your garden! I enjoyed them all!

Bonnie

Meteor-
Your tomatoes look great and I love all the room you have for them. Is Virginia creeper invasive in our climate? I drive north on University through the Cherry Hills area and the brick walls and golf course fences are covered in it.

Bonnie-
You have your own seperate herb bed! *drool* It looks great. Your tomato looks so healthy and I envy the lack of bunny nibbles in your lettuce. Your peas look great too.

Jamie-
Your fountain is great, does it require much maintenance? The bed with marigolds looks like it has a high sand content, how is that working for you?

Digit-
I echo Skybird's sentiment. I wish I was as productive as you are with the veggie gardens. Such neat long rows!

My veggie bed is lacking the super-organization that you all seem to have with your "rows", "stakes" and "cages". Sometimes I think I prefer to learn things the hard way.
I'll jump in with a flower bed photo instead:

I must have missed Michelle's last post...thanks for the head's up, Bonnie. And yes, your salad garden does make me want a salad - we just can't grow lettuces here, they always get eaten by bugs! :-)

Azura, that flower bed is gorgeous!! All that lovely color...our beds are still "establishing themselves", so we don't have that filled out look yet.

The fountain doesn't take much maintenance at all so far - aside from the first day, when we had a taller spray head on it. It's so windy here that the water just got blown outside of the pond liner (under the rocks), and it wasted a lot of water. With this smaller head, even if the wind blows the water still goes back down into the pond below, so it just refills every other day or so when the sprinklers come on. We keep the pump running 24/7, to avoid problems with mosquitos, and the rocks (sitting on top of hardware cloth), cover the pond itself so no debris can get in. Pretty easy, so far...

That's not sand in the veggie beds. :-) It's dried grass...I have hubby toss the grass from lawn mowing over the beds every few weeks, and it makes a nice mulch to keep the soil moist, eventually decomposing into the soil. Works great!

I'll second that, Jamie, about Azura's flower bed being gorgeous ... and I don't even LIKE purple or blue flowers, LOL!!!

BTW, I thought that was sand too! I don't see so well anymore though. That's why I post such large pictures (my apologies for those of you with dial-up web connections), because it's the only way I can make out what I'm looking at.

So far, the bunnies haven't discovered my veggie patch, but I have pulled out quite a few fat, green catepillars, and have to pull out bindweed on a daily basis.

How were you guys able to pull up Jclepines photos? When I copy and paste those to the address bar at the top, it doesn't work for me.

Bonnie

One good thing about bindweed, I've found. The bees are interested in it. I watched some bees today going from bindweed flower to flower to flower. If it brings bees to my yard, I guess I can deal with it.

Although I'm sure that no matter how much I yank up, there will be plenty more.

I just can't grow lettuce or spinach for the life of me. The bugs get it long before I do. I'm going to try growing it in containers, and see if that makes any difference.

I haven't been able to look at the photobucket images, because photobucket is blocked here at work (and I rarely get online at home). Just make sure you're not posting the image [img] brackets up there with the address, that might help.

We have been working hard to erradicate bindweed - that area we turned into a garden started out as a huge patch of nothing but bindweed. Hence our landscaping.

I love plants...but bindweed is my nemesis!

Well, that was it Jamie, thanks!

Our yard was the same way when we moved in, just dirt with patches of bindweed. This was my first encounter with it, so I didn't try to kill it off while I had the chance. Once the sod was laid down, it really took off, and now it's everywhere. I'm trying to stay organic, so I spend a lot of time in the summer pulling it out of the lawn, but I'm afraid it's a losing battle.

Bonnie

What did Michelle post that got pulled? You're making me curious...

Info in the mail, Steve!

The veges:
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One of the windowboxes:
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Part of the perennial border:
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Just WOW Robin! That looks incredible.

Aw shucks, meteor04, thanks! The gardens have been my little island of sanity in the midst of a neverending remodeling project with 3 kids, jobs, and farm animals. I bet your Virginia Creeper in October is nearly as impressive as your tomatoes in August!

Beautiful gardens, everyone!

Ok, I'm punting this up because I spent much of yesterday weeding my garden, and it's pretty right now. I tried to get a pic from the same spot as the first, and I think it's pretty close...

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I tell ya, my lawn is crap this year, my cosmos never took off, my sunflowers are (so far) disapointing, but...This is easily the best veg-garden I've ever had! This time next month, we'll be begging people to take cukes, scallop squash and maters off our hands.