Garden Time

I love gardening, don't you?  

It is so much work and yet so fun and fulfilling.

In my blog I want to tell about the challenges and successes we're having and there have been plenty of challenges. I'll post pictures and hope you'll feel right at home.

We bought an historic old home 2 1/2 years ago and took up most of the lawn and cut down 4 of the 8 large trees on the .29 acre property.  So we were starting with pretty much a clean slate. 
We knew we wanted fruit trees, grape vines, raised beds for vegetables and beds of perennials and a few annuals. So we put our ideas on paper and worked out a design that would fit everything we wanted into the small yard. 

We had a 50'x10'x8' tall arbor built across the back of the yard for the kiwi vines and grape vines to grow on. We already have 3 very old grape vines on our north fence that have such wonderful green seedless grapes but now we've planted 11 more seedless grapes along the arbor. This year (the 3rd summer) there are lots and lots of grapes. We have 2 hardy kiwi vines that are already about 20' long and very thick. Can't wait for those kiwi to see what they're going to be like.


We then built three 16'x4' raised beds for the vegetables. This year we had sugar snap peas, green beans, cucumber, corn, beets, collards, yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes (out our ears), onions, scallions and rainbow chard. 


Next we planted 19 fruit trees. That's right, 19. They are semi-dwarf so hopefully they will be just the right size. We have 5 cherry trees, 5 peach trees, 4 apricots, 2 apriums, 1 plum & 2 apple trees. 
Plus there was a peach tree, crabapple tree and black walnut tree already on the property.


We also have 6 blueberry bushes which aren't doing so hot since the soil isn't acidic enough to keep them happy. We have 48 raspberry bushes, 8 blackberry, a strawberry patch, 4 rhubarb plants and 1 current bush. We also have a large asparagus bed. They're perennial and so we'll get to enjoy asparagus for many years to come.


All along we'd been putting in perennials (roses, phlox, day-lilies, astilbe, echinacea, anemonies, artemesia, loosestrife, speedwell, agastache, delphiniums, centranthus, hardy geraniums, dahlias, peonies, tulips, irises, daffodils, hydrangea, ferns, pulmonaria, spiderwort, columbine...) so now our flower
beds are quite crowded, which I like.
Our garden is like an English cottage garden with foxglove and hollyhocks and a lot of plants I don't even know the name of. I knew at one time but can't remember now. But they're pretty.


We also have quite a lot of herbs, my favorite being tarragon. Love it. It makes the best herbal tea, hot or cold. 

So now, here it is 2 1/2 years later and its been so fun watching things grow and produce. Some things produce too much though because our Red Haven peach tree was over burdened with beautiful red fruit and the trunk split all the way to the ground. We had taken off quite a lot of fruit but obviously not nearly enough. We were able to pull it back up and truss it together and will bolt the trunk together and hopefully it will grow back. Even if it makes it we know we will have a weak tree and will have to baby it along and give the limbs lots of support.

We had a large deck (32'x16') built, just off the ground, and now its covered in potted plants. There's still enough room for people, but just barely. 

This is probably more than anyone every wanted to know about our little yard but its a fun place and I wish I could share it with everyone.