Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Not Bad For An Amateur - Tour Time!

I just realized I've been doing all this posting and I have yet to take the time to show everybody my garden. How callous of me. Well, let's get to it then. C'MON!!

This is an overall shot of my main garden at the end of June, 2013. I'm ridiculously proud of it, especially when compared to my abysmal, embarrassing, 2 previous garden seasons. This really is the first season where my garden looks like it might actually produce a respectable amount of food. I'm so excited! Yes, yes, I know. It doesn't look very overly organized and I actually planned it that way. I didn't want to all the same plants in the same area, because it seems like that's a good thing for confusing pests; I don't know if it actually makes a difference pest wise, it simply makes sense to me. There's lots of, probably too much, square gardening spacing and companion planting going on.

Here we have half of my container area. The far one is leeks for the winter, then strawberries, then romaine lettuce, romaine lettuce, and romaine lettuce - yay romaine lettuce! It really is the best lettuce.

And here is my main container area. On the left is 4 sunflowers. 2 of the sunflowers have cucumbers growing in container with them. Why? Because that's how you find out whether or not something works. It's called an experiment. I read sunflowers and cucumbers work well together. I'm a little skeptical that they'll have enough room, but I'll definitely find out when one of the two plants strangles the other. Those 3 along the back right are tomatoes. The bigger tomato bins also have carrots and some garlic. Along the front from left to right I've got mint, lemon balm, carrots, lavender, amaranth, some flower seedlings I've forgotten the name of, another type of mint, and a nasturtium.

Nothing particularly special about this area, just a cabbage, a kale, some cucumbers, a sunflower, nasturtium, corn, beans, and some wild flowers. I rather the variety in the photo though.

So much lettuce! There were a lot of radishes growing inbetween the lettuce, but they've all been picked. Depressing peppers in the back. Also some basil which you can't really see at this angle. The basil is there though, I promise!

I like to call this one the Brassica Bed because it's mostly cabbage and kale. In the front there's dill, garlic, nasturtium, marjoram, thyme, random wildflowers, cilantro, and sunflowers. In the back part is a row of lettuce, spinach, chard, parsley, and a 4 foot long mound that was intended for several melons. The melons planted in the mound have been doing horribly, so there's that, which is soul-crushingly disappointing... Looks like my melon mound is just going to grow some carrots and radishes... fine... I guess.

Corn and green beans! YEAH! I like corn and I like green beans. I planted lots of corn and green beans because I like corn and green beans. Oh and there's some kale, cabbage, and spinach in the back.

That tomato on the left is growing like a weed. I swear, every time I come out to the garden it's doubled in size - true story. There's a little direct seeded tomato plant on the right; I wonder if it will even produce fruit. There's some chives tucked into the left corner and carrots fill up the rest of the bed.

This is the most perplexing and, probably, my favorite bed in the garden. I didn't plant a single thing in this bed. Everything you see sprouted from seeds and trimmings in the compost. I used partially decomposed compost, because all the finished stuff had already been applied to the other beds. My plan for the bed when I was designing the garden this year was to fill it to the brim with potatoes. But a week or 2 before I meant to plant my seed potatoes, I came across potato seedlings poking their way through the straw. That saved me a lot of trouble. Thanks, not fully decomposed, chunky compost. And as if this bed wasn't awesome enough, 2 really healthy melons have sprouted out of the compost, reigniting my hopes of growing some melons this year after that mound so heartlessly crushed my melon-hopes.