Duckworth
Chillin' In The Garden
I'm new to TEG. I gardened in Arizona before I moved to Nebraska. I started in AZ with a flat gravel moonscape front yard with a huge, scraggly attack cholla, and ended up with a contoured garden of cactuses and desert trees, some of which were volunteers that I pruned into healthy trees. The potted flowers by the entryway had to be watered twice daily all summer. We tried winter vegetable gardening, but our neighbor's huge Aleppo pine tree sent its roots into our yard and sucked every drop of water we added out of the soil.
Then we moved to Nebraska, where every seed sprouts and grows wildly. We live in my husband's family home in a historic neighborhood. After cutting down the dense thicket that had developed everywhere but the front yard, we moved on to the front yard, a third of which was covered in overgrown yew and burning bushes. we cut those down and removed 14 large stumps. Then we had a pretty much blank canvas with three trees, including a 60-foot oak.
I started with a six-pack of tomatoes and a six-pack of peppers in the front yard, being completely unaware that they would GROW. The next year, we built a raised bed vegetable garden in a sunny section of our front yard. The next two years, we put raised beds into the front half of our south-facing side yard, and the next year, we planted apple trees in the other half. The raised beds give us about 700 square feet of planting space. I grow vegetables, herbs, flowers (about half edible) and this year put roses in the front yard off the end of the porch.
This was our fourth year and our garden feeds more than just our family. I would like to plant more of our front yard in vegetables. Less troublesome lawn and more food. My front yard vegetable garden doesn't look like a farm. It is a mix of veggies and flowers and is kept neat. Behind the side yard fence, it looks more farm-like, with efficient use of space the main focus, though I still interplant flowers to make it a pleasant and colorful space while it churns out food. As time goes by, I want to replace utilitarian structures with more aesthetically pleasing ones. The garden and our ducks are my stress-busters.
Then we moved to Nebraska, where every seed sprouts and grows wildly. We live in my husband's family home in a historic neighborhood. After cutting down the dense thicket that had developed everywhere but the front yard, we moved on to the front yard, a third of which was covered in overgrown yew and burning bushes. we cut those down and removed 14 large stumps. Then we had a pretty much blank canvas with three trees, including a 60-foot oak.
I started with a six-pack of tomatoes and a six-pack of peppers in the front yard, being completely unaware that they would GROW. The next year, we built a raised bed vegetable garden in a sunny section of our front yard. The next two years, we put raised beds into the front half of our south-facing side yard, and the next year, we planted apple trees in the other half. The raised beds give us about 700 square feet of planting space. I grow vegetables, herbs, flowers (about half edible) and this year put roses in the front yard off the end of the porch.
This was our fourth year and our garden feeds more than just our family. I would like to plant more of our front yard in vegetables. Less troublesome lawn and more food. My front yard vegetable garden doesn't look like a farm. It is a mix of veggies and flowers and is kept neat. Behind the side yard fence, it looks more farm-like, with efficient use of space the main focus, though I still interplant flowers to make it a pleasant and colorful space while it churns out food. As time goes by, I want to replace utilitarian structures with more aesthetically pleasing ones. The garden and our ducks are my stress-busters.
Hi from Vancouver Island I think you're going to love it here, a mix of flowers and veggies, that's the kind of garden I like an old fashioned cottage garden.
