Wednesday, December 24, 2008

The Changing of the Garden

The property features a very sizable vegetable garden as well as numerous fruit trees throughout.

Here are some shots of the Summer vegetable garden and some miscellaneous fruit trees...






The Summer garden of '08 featured green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, yellow squash and cucumbers. Fruit trees on the property include figs, apples, oranges, lemons, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, pomegranates, persimmons and perhaps others that I can't think of at the moment.

The Summer garden was of course planted by the previous caretaker. Having taken over at the beginning of Fall, I had the opportunity to tear this out and replant the new Winter garden.

(I'll add a photo here later.)

The Winter garden features fava beans, red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, arugula, turnips, beets, carrots, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, onions, garlic, leeks and bok choi.

I also have some raised planter boxes outside my cottage, where I've planted the things that are susceptible to frost damage (lettuces). I bought some frost barrier and experimented with different installation techniques, as shown below...





I installed the frost barrier in three different configurations; the traditional tent, the flat canopy and the quonset hut. By doing so, I learned that the quonset hut configuration was the simplest, cheapest, most durable and user-friendly method. The flat tarp technique did not work well at all and I switched it over to the quonset hut today...



The traditional tent configuration is working well enough, but was more difficult to install...








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