Garden One through the Summer
This is how hard the ground is when I start working it.
I promised updates on the gardens and here's the first one on, appropriately enough, my first garden. This garden is a semi-circular plot of land extending from our useless garages. Why useless? Because the garage doors parallel the road. To get my little Focus into the garage I have to drive into the driveway, back up to a 45 degree angle, drive forward a few feet, back up again to a 90 degree angle, then carefully maneuver the wheels back to a 45 degree angle as I guide the little car into the middle of the 2.5 garages. Ed's massive Cowboy Cadillac cannot make it into the garages. Oh, and the 2.5 size for the garage? That's because Sam put in a specially made garage door/bay for his golf cart. It's the .5.
These guys were my buddies all summer
Back to the garden. The previous winter I'd worked this space–which is about equal to all three of my medium-sized raised gardens back in Scottsdale–adding a wheelbarrow full of horse you-know-what and four or five wheelbarrows full of autumn leaves. This all rotted over the winter. Spring came, the javelina ate the tulips (I wrote that story a while back), I added my herbs, which was always my intention, sunflowers and, way too late in the season, tomatoes. Way too late, dang it. (The sunflower in this picture came out of this seed package.)
Here they are the day before the storm
The "normal" sunflowers grew and were gorgeous until late August when we had a killer storm that knocked them all down.
After that storm, and the hail and rain that came with it, a whole new batch of sunflowers appeared. That's when I remembered having planted Mexican Sunflowers. (That's my biggest failing in the garden. I love to plant but hate to document what seeds I've thrown where so things just show up. This is not going to work if I'm farming as a business. Ed has promised to get my my own iPad on which I will document what I'm doing when I'm doing it.)
Here are the Mexican sunflowers in beautiful bloom
I love Mexican sunflowers. They're usually only about 4 feet tall and they have velvety smooth bright orange blossoms that make great additions to cut flower bouquets. These just happened to come up with a new crop of lavender and purple cosmos. Go Suns! Oh wait, I'm not a Suns fan (team colors=purple and orange). Once again I managed to take this picture the day before our first frost which slaughtered them. At least I got the picture!
Here are those tomatoes the day before the frost
Growing beneath the sunflowers and looking more beautiful than any I'd ever before grown were those way-too-late tomatoes. The Cherokee Purple tomatoes were (actually still are) covered in tomatoes the size of small boulders. I was on my toes for the frost and protected them; the sunflowers were too tall to cover. All I need is a week of days in the 60 degree range and those tomatoes will ripen. I hope. If not, it's green tomato chutney all around this Christmas. (Recipe coming soon.)
Now, I'm planting in the winter veggies. A dozen lettuce plants went in as has Bull's blood beets, which are grown more for their greens than their roots. The herbs, being herbs, will stay put and hopefully survive the winter. I'll be adding more broccoli soon and a thick line of Fava beans and peas.
But not until the very last of those gorgeous tomato plants gives up the ghost and dies.
