[Click here to see the horticulturist whose guidance our friend and organic gardener followed.]
Here is my summary of each photo [as our organic garden was created]:garden prep - Mid-March 2010: Very little preparation needed (about two hours worth!) for a 6 X 6 1/2 foot space. We left some sticks and weeds, did no digging . . . put up a small bamboo fence to hold things in place. In the photo: we laid down some weed-stop cloth that we already had, then covered the planting area with newsprint (I used some art newsprint, too).
garden with straw - This was taken of me after we had completed the layers. What you see is the top layer of straw; down the middle, we laid a few stepping stones on top of the weed-stop cloth.
lettuce; celery - Mid May, 2010 - This was the tastiest celery! It continues to grow; I am still using it (March of 2011) in my juice. Besides the lettuce that you see here, in this bed we've so far grown butter lettuce, romaine, kale, bok choi, parsley, chives, dill, and three cucumber plants. To the right, you can see the ripening cherry tomatoes. The lettuce was a little bitter at times (I think this was due in part to my not knowing when to replace plants.) I don't eat the lettuce myself, but other family members do.
Garden in June - This tomato plant was prolific, and the fruit delicious. In the background, you see our dwarf Anna apple tree. To the right is one of the cucumber plants, mixing with a volunteer Nasturtium.
In the fall, I added some compost and planted a few bok choi and lettuce plants. Besides picking them for eating, I did very little to care for these through the winter. Last week we harvested much of it for a 3-day event with a potluck each day. Everyone raved about the sweetness of the bok choi and lettuce, and wanted to know what kind of garden I had. And my two celery plants are still producing (for nearly a full year, we have harvested from our own garden one cup worth of juice of the six cups we make every few days!)
During the last year, I have not weeded nor had any sign of bugs in this garden. I'm now getting ready to buy small plants for my second year garden!
