Little Corner Homestead

Here is my July Garden, in all it’s (lack of ) glory:

I know it isn’t the best light, but in this photo you can see the entirety of my ‘orchard’ and garden. My orchard right now consists of three spindly apple trees.

Here you can see my first 4×8 box from both the north and south. The tomatoes on the west side of my box seem to be doing much better growth wise. However, they have yet to produce a single fruit. The green feathers growing to the south of the tomatoes are the first years growth of my asparagus.

Here is my second 4×8 bed. More tomatoes to the north (also growing better to the west, also NO FRUIT!). The bottom row is basil, which is growing splendidly. The row above that is pepper plants, however, I think I started them too late, because they aren’t producing either.

My third 4×8 bed. The garlic to the north, which I have already harvested. Potatoes in the bottom corner. I just transplanted all of the volunteer potatoes that popped up in other beds into this one, and they are doing great. The rest of the space was carrots, but, again, I planted too late, and they did nothing. I got maybe four carrots out of the 100 or so I planted.

This is my raspberry bed. It is a whopping 20’x10′. Where are the raspberries, you say? Well, I bought bare root raspberries this spring and was unaware that, like bare root trees, you must soak them prior to planting. So they died. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good bed, I planted winter squash (the two large plants that you see) and melons. The melons have grown more since this picture.  I also have four blackberry plants that I bought at Home Depot on a whim planted on the west side of the bed. They aren’t producing yet, but neither are they dead. We’ll check back on them next spring.

You also may have noticed that the bed is only half filled with dirt, the other half being filled with weeds. I only had enough raspberry plants this spring to plant half the bed, so we only filled half the bed. We will fill the other half this fall.

Here are my herb pots. There is more basil, rosemary, thyme, and oregano. There used to be mint in one of the pots. I killed it. Yes, I know that you are not supposed to be able to kill mint. What can I say, I’m gifted.

I have two potato towers to the west of the hypothetical berry patch. This is an experiment to see if potato towers produce as well as potatoes in the beds. We’ll see this fall.

This is a cinderella pumpkin that my mother gave me. It is planted north of my potato towers This pumpkin at one point was being attacked by squash bugs. I’ll tell you how I took care of them in my next post.

Here is my last 4×8 bed. It is to the south of the potato towers. This bed was intended for strawberries, however, they also died. These deaths I can’t entirely explain, but I think that they probably weren’t watered enough. Their death was a blessing in disguise though. I refigured the eventual proportions of my garden, and I am going to turn the bed to run north/south and lengthen it to 20 ft, the same as my berry patch. The whole bed will be used for strawberries and I can rotate it along the bed.

Right now I have zucchini and crookneck squashes on the south side, doing beautifully, full of blossoms, and going to produce any day now. The north side has a melon and a cucumber, also full of blossoms. I am going to set up a trellis on the north side of the bed to run the melon and cucumber up (the melon is a small variety), because they are attempting to take over each others space.

That is the entirety of my garden right now. I have planned something much, much grander though. I cover my garden plans in a future post, probably closer to fall.

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