Garden Progress

The Herb Garden

This is the new herb garden at the front of the house. The front of the bed will have flowers as a border for this year. Planted here are parsley, dill, rosemary, scented geranium, wormwood, catnip, spearmint, peppermint, thyme, and true oregano. I left plenty of space for the mints and catnip to expand. That area doesn't have landscape fabric down, but the rest of the garden does. I'm hoping this helps to keep them contained, since mints spread everywhere once they get started.


I actually had to replant the catnip because the cats ate the original plant before it could establish. It now has a cage around it made of chicken wire in hopes of keeping them from destroying it.

We have another herb and flower garden on the otherside of the house, but it is so weedy it makes me cry. Once I clean it up I will post it.

The Fruit Orchard

This is the fruit orchard, still really small. It's at the front of the property to do triple duty. We live on a gravel road that gets *extremely* dusty. (As in I can have a 1/8 inch coating of dust on my dining room table in an hour. As in we generate our own smoke screen when we mow within 50 feet of the road.) so, the plan is for it to help screen the house from the road and help keep the dust that reaches the house down.


The two trees that need the grass cut around them are Granny Smith apples that we planted a few years ago. This is the first year they have fruited and we have 4 apples. They need a little pruning, but next year I hope they will start to have a significant yield. The tree on the far right is a new Northern Spy apple tree we just purchased. The two trees to the front are plum trees. They have as much fruit on them as the established apple trees, even though we just planted them!

The Vegetable Garden

I had the kids stand in the garden for perspective. My daughter is actually almost 6 feet tall. We're in the process of putting down cardboard and newspaper between the rows as mulch. Our land was commercially farmed for generations, so we are still building up the soil. You can see the compost pile there on the left.

So, here's what's planted, left to right:

One row of buckwheat
One row of alfalfa
One row with carrots and radishes in a wide bed, zucchini, and a few peppers
One row of peppers and cilantro
3 rows of tomatoes intermixed with basil (romas, cherry, heirloom mix, and a couple of beefsteaks
3 rows of Kentucky wonder beans
One row of cabbage and garlic (red and white cabbage and garlic does double duty to repel rabbits)
One row of peas, lettuce, and onions
Another row of just onions
A potato patch behind those three rows (russets, reds, and sweet potatoes)
6 30' rows of corn to the front on the right
one row of slicing cucumbers
one row of cantaloupes
one row of pumpkins
one row of pickling cucumbers
one row of butternut squash
two rows of watermelon