2019 Garden Part 1 - Ready to go

Our garden is finally up and running... we've had a surprisingly cool and rainy start of things, but we tied up the tomatoes and planted the salad greens this afternoon, so it's time to share our 13th year fighting against the squirrel mafia.

This year, as with every year, we added a few things to the garden. And THIS is the year that I think our garden looks as beautiful as it is functional. 13 just may be our lucky number!

Our first addition was to replace all of our orange pails with a 2'x8' deep raised bed for deep-rooted plants. Because our tomatoes can grow to at LEAST 8' high, we felt that this might help with their production.

This bed holds 10 blue-gold tomato plants, and 6 mini red peppers that were started from seed in February as well as several dozen parsnips.

We are experimenting with a string-method of supporting our tomatoes as well, and my son helped me build this simple frame to allow the plants to reach 7' high.

And we are also trying a deep-root watering system, with recycled bottles to see if we can beat the August drought this year.

We moved our old raised beds into the Northwest corner, and my husband repurposed the old squirrel-cage into squirrel-proof cloches so we can grow... STRAWBERRIES!!!

We tried to start these from seed, but absolutely nothing came up. So this is 16 plants from the nursery. Our hope is that if everything goes well, we can try to start seeds again next year, but since this is our third attempt at strawberries - if it doesn't work, we won't be trying again.

(Our dog Spirit LOVES watching the neighborhood from under these beds... we can't open the door without her RACING to get outside and patrol for squirrels!)

And we moved the trellis to the Southwest corner.

Something I have wanted to try for years, is shepherds crooks and coco-mulch hanging planters. This year as we were pulling the spare bamboo poles from the shed to shore this up, we found the shepherds crooks that I'd purchased three years ago for the kids' graduation party. *facepalm* I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN that we already had these!!!

So this year, firmly planted in the center of each of our pole-bean and cucumber planters, is a shepherds crook. This is where we planted our three invasive herbs, to keep them under control.

Our towers are still going strong and our worms survived beautifully, thanks to a worm-tower found on Craigslist that lived in our dining room all winter long. Being able to continue feeding them kitchen-scraps and having several cubic feet of rich mulch to begin our garden with this year was a wonderfully "green" feeling.

Those are our changes for the year... so our garden, starting at the door and circling left holds the following:
tomatoes, peppers and parsnips in the deep bed
strawberries in the (now covered) raised beds
carrots in the white bins
lettuce, arugula, spinach and herbs in the two towers
beans and cucumbers in the trellised planters
chive, lemonbalm and mint in the hanging planters
and marshmallow in a planter by the door!

We are so excited, as for the 13th year in a row... this looks to be the best urban oasis we've ever had!