Progress of Garden

When Mom first moved back to Cobble Hill a few years ago, the property hadn't had any active gardening, at least not from the vegetable raising perspective, for a number of years.

In the first summer when Mom first arrived, we didn't get much done other than a patch of potatoes dug. It looked like a couple of graves in the lawn! And, somewhat surprisingly, the deer had chewed the new potato leaves to the ground. But we did manage to get potatoes that year, and we figured that in order for any edible food to be grown, we needed a deer fence.

So we had lawn to remove, and fencing to put up to keep the deer out. I realized recently that I haven't got any posts showing the progress from grass to garden, so I'd like to remedy that now.

The start of the deer fencing for the Kitchen Garden

Deer fencing up! - Early spring 2006

The first planting - spring 2006

We moved our dwarf heritage apple trees and some blueberries from Burnaby over to Cobble Hill and installed them in the Kitchen Garden, and built some raised beds in the next year:


In 2008 the "little mule" arrived: Dave's two-wheeled tractor, a Grillo made in Italy, which has hugely helped the conversion from raw land to garden. We decided that once we had the tractor, the raised beds were more work than they were worth, so now we just have dirt.

Dave's "little mule" set up to rototill the Kitchen Garden

And while it wasn't the first year we grew tomatillos, it was certainly a bumper crop year (which has been repeated pretty regularly since):

Tomatillos

So we keep getting a little better every year, and try new things to grow. In 2009 we had pretty much all of the Kitchen Garden under production, with chick peas (garbanzo beans), shelling and snap peas, tomatillos, brocolli, kohlrabi, carrots, beets, Chinese greens, and of course the odd left over spud from years before poking through.

Kitchen Garden 2009

Our tomatoes, peppers and ground cherries were moved out to the new greenhouse and we tried our hand at "Early Dew" melons and pickling cucumbers there, too.


And we grew a number of squash varieties and some lemon cucumbers, along with dried beans, out in the newly enclosed Orchard, which I don't seem to have photos of right now.

This year, we've done even more - I'll post photos in a while!

Greenhouse Update - Raised Beds

Last year we constructed the greenhouse, then earlier this spring Dave put in some more windows, and then last month, Dave changed the planting arrangements inside by building some wonderful raised beds to replace the half wine-barrels that we used last year:


We bought these nifty metal connectors from Lee Valley for converting concrete paving stones into the sides for raised beds. All that was needed further was to purchase the paving stones and some pressure-treated lumber from the local building supplies store. And some sand. And then lots of labour.

Dave spread some landscape fabric on top of the gravel foundation of our greenhouse, then laid some sand to level the areas where the raised beds were going to be built. On top of this went the footing for the raised beds (which are the connectors attached to the lumber). Then the pavers go upright between the brackets on top of the lumber footings.

Aligning the pavers between brackets

Tightening the brackets

Next wall of pavers

Construction complete

The raised beds are 2' deep, 2' wide, and I can't remember how long altogether, but we'll fit an awful lot of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and ground cherries in there this year!