Gardening: A Little Different Angle

I have been meaning to post a garden update for some time.  But for some reason or another it keeps on getting put off, and the garden keeps on growing, which means I have to take new pictures before I can think about blogging.... and the circle goes round and round. 

So before another day passes.  Here is "how our garden grows."

It all started a couple months ago, inside under lamps, slowly moving to the porch, then gradually, as the weather warmed, outside.

Little tiny sprouts sprang up in the garden. 

Onions and Radishes, Lettuce, and peas.  All pushing their way through the dirt and made drops of green in the garden.

It has been 7 years since we planted the first half of our large garden #1.  So the idea of giving the garden a year off ("Six years you shall sow your field, and gather it's fruit; but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard." ~Leviticus 25:3-4) combined with the fact that the upper garden was too wet to get into this spring, so we really couldn't plant it even if we wanted to, made Faith look into alternative places and ways to garden.  

One of the ideas was planting beans (you could also do it with lettuce etc.) in gutters.  Faith drilled holes in the bottom of the gutters and then screwed them to our deck railing (perfect for picking!).  Then she filled them with compost and dirt, planted her beans seeds and watered.  So far they are doing quite well!

Faith first made a "three sisters garden" a couple years ago, but this year we went all out with 15 mounds.

The idea originally came from the Native Americans.  The oldest "sister is the corn, which you plant first.  You plant beans around the corn when they are up.  The corn providing a "pole" for the beans to climb on.  The third sister is squash (or pumpkin) which shades the corns "feet" and keeps predators from coming and eating the corn or beans (racoons don't like climbing through poky, tangly squash vines).

In the back (currently our main) garden, there is everything from peas, to lettuce, to tomatoes and peppers.

The great wall of peas...

Our corn has done fabulous this year.  Instead of knee high by the fourth of July, I think it will be shoulder high. ;)  (depending on the person of course)

Faith likes to experiment with different types and colors of your normal garden plants.  This year we have yellow, white, orange and red striped, green striped, and blue/purple tomatoes.  Along with some purple peas!

{Faith in her garden}

Not all of the plants we need fit in the back garden (and you can't quite put them in gutters) so we have an accumulation of potted plants on our deck as well.  More tomatoes and peppers, some celery and some ground cherries.

We are super grateful for how well our garden has done this year, even if we have had to take a little different angle on it, and thankful to our gardener Faith who puts in so much work to make sure we have good food to eat.  Of course the most of our thanks goes to the "Master Gardener" who sends down the rain and gives the increase.

~Chs