Sunday 22 July 2012

Well it has been a long time since I took up my 'pen' to write in my blog.  Life got very hectic the past few months as I had a series of health issues which culminated in a prolonged visit to the Emergency department at our local hospital.  However, things have settled down and I am able now to get back to my goal of blogging.

I want to share a picture of what my wonderful husband did for me two years ago so I could maximize our limited backyard space for vegetable production.  Our backyard slopes down from the read to the back of the house.  We have maybe 1-2 inches of topsoil - the rest is rock (in our neighborhood the builders had to dynamite out the basements as we are on top of the Canadian shield outcrop).

Back in Alberta, he had built for me 100 square feet of vegetable garden using up on 2 feet of our yard - he built me two tiers of 2X30 and 2X25 raised beds along the side and back fences.  This is when I started to practice Sqare Foot Gardening as written by Mel Bartholomew. 

Here we decided instead of along the fence we would maximize more space by building three tiers of beds and cutting the property diagonally across the back - here is a picture.  This way instead of trying to dig into the ground to make the beds, he built the tiers above.  The little popsicle sticks mark my seeds that are planted using the square foot methodology.  This way I can differentiate between weeds sprouting and vegetable sprouting (especially for vegetables I have never grown before)

Here is a picture of the other side of the yard where he built me a little patio.



This is what the vegetable area looks like when all the plants have grown:

You can see the pea plants and tomatoe plants are taller than me. The small plants in from of the peas and tomatoes are basil plants.  The peas and tomatoes are supported vertically to maximize the garden area,

Tomorrow I will show you what he has done on the other side of the yard with more raised  beds.  Also this year we are planting potatoes in black sacks, and carrots and zucchini in half barrels.



I can get maximum production within a limited space.  The rear of the  backyard is north and the beds get a lot of the sun during the day - the tomatoes did fantastically that year (2010). They did so well that our black lab would jump in and eat the perfectly ripe tomatoes before we got a chance to harvest.  This year we decided to plant the tomatoes in the front so that we could eat them instead of the dog.

Anyways more tomorrow...

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