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Other Pages: St. John's Wort & Horseradish | Garlic in Rows | Rose Garden Nodding Onion & Butterfly Weed | Ligularia | The Pond An Extraordinary Glad | Grace at the Vegetable Garden Gates The Garden in 1999 |
This is the newly fenced vegetable garden showing the emerging seedlings. The fencing project took us a weekend which included a lot of digging and controversy. We inserted 4 x 4 pressure treated posts every 8 feet and attached chicken wire to this with a staple gun. The back filling of dirt holds the chicken wire in place and strengthens the fencing. It succeeded in preventing rabbits and groundhog from devouring the vegetables. It also deterred much wandering through the garden so that compaction would not be a problem.
The seeds were planted in raised rows with ample space between them in order to hoe the weeds and access the vegetables for picking. It was a pleasant occupation to hoe the weeds. After one well timed hoeing, the vegetables themselves shaded out the weeds and only needed the odd touch up.
We had a bountiful harvest of beets, from which I made 17 jars of the much sought after pickled beets. We grew a lettuce mix which kept us in greens for most of the season. I had intended on planting a later crop of this greens mix when the beets were harvested but did not. I will try to do this in future because there is ample time for a second crop of something after the beets.
Arugula was the most outstanding of all the greens. This was included in the greens mix and I also planted it separately in the Physic Garden. It has a nutty flavour and adds a great deal to any dish. It is wonderful to graze upon whilst in the garden.
We had fennel, leeks, parsnips, spinach, Swiss chard, beans, carrots and squash. These are vegetables which succeed, so far, in our soil. We hope to grow more carrots and onions in future but the soil tends to be too heavy. The yearly addition of compost should help to loosen the soil over time and make the vegetable patch more conducive to root vegetables.
The tepees adjacent to the vegetable garden are trellises for the tomatoes. Better Boy, Bonnie Best and some variety of tiny Tim tomatoes were doing beautifully until the late blight fungus attacked and killed the crop over the course of about 3 days. Scary stuff and quite profound. Our potato crop nearby was also hit and consequently produced a meagre crop of spuds. There is a distinct possibility that I won't grow potatoes next year and try to rid the soil of the fungus. I will move the tomato production to an area well away from the vegetable garden. We are learning the hard way that in order to grow vegetables we must be strict, tidy and selective.
The Physic Garden is an ornamental collection of useful plants and herbs. They are planted as specimens, organized in an attractive and symmetrical way. This is a rare photo of the gardener wearing gardening gloves. It must be early in the season because she's usually lost most of them by June!
At the back of the photo is the comfrey plant. I grew this from seed many moons ago and I learned quickly that it commands space. You only need one plant. It takes up at least 5 feet in diameter and has become the centrepiece of one large section of the garden. It grows rapidly, produces a drooping blush pink flower, then collapses completely and does it all over again. This year it flowered three times.
Surrounding the comfrey is a conglomeration of things. Rhubarb lines the walkway for easy picking. Shade is a factor in the back section so I can't be quite so picky about what I want there. Arugula did well but the coriander was poor. This might have been the seed. Sweet Cicely was highly recommended by several sources as a dramatic, useful plant which doesn't mind shade. The stems taste like licorice candy and people are always surprised and delighted when they taste it. It blooms in the early spring, which I missed since it was planted in the spring. I look forward to that and I'm told it looks like a robust dill.
I planted three varieties of sage around the Sweet Cicely. These ultimately died because of too much damp dark conditions. We have really missed the sage this winter for cooking. You need sage for Christmas dinner, chicken pot pie and all the comfort foods for the cold. There is a new space reserved for sage in the spring. Sage is highly ornamental. The woody nature of the stems take some managing but I'd like to have a sage hedge of some sort. Hedges and edges are big with ornamental / physic gardens.
In the forefront, there is wormwood Artemisia sp.. This has a woody, rather unattractive, base from which spring forth heavily scented compounded grey leaves. It is supposed to be good in place of moth balls. Insects don't seem to like it. Its most useful purpose was its selection as the broom for the snowman in the winter! I always harvest the stems after they flower and then you get a second crop. I bunch these with string and hang them in the bunkie. I have no definite plans for them but I often use them for mulch around plants I want especially to protect from insects. I'd like to start growing plants which are good for drying. Monkshood, I discovered by accident, keeps its colour all winter. The last harvest from the garden in the fall has dried beautifully in the vase and continues to be a decorative piece about the home.
Lovage is the tall, celery-like plant at the right in the picture. You only need one of these as well and I find the taste too strong. I have been promised Lovage soup to convince me otherwise.
In the spring, I carved out substantial edges for the beds and accentuated the pathway in. As a response to that, Paul made a twig arbour which simply takes your breath away. I have planted two of what are supposed to be Bittersweet (Celastrus scandens) but I have my doubts. It seems unbelievable based on the source that it isn't what I bought, but I guess these things happen. Bittersweet will adorn this arbour as I need to have the bittersweet berries for decorations at Christmas. We do need to secure the structure because of a sometimes over exuberant grass cutter.
We planted a climbing rose ‘New Dawn', which will be a stunning addition to the garden. Chamomile grows at the base of the entranceway and nasturtiums spill over the edges. One fabulous discovery this year was Lemon Verbena. We bought it from Richter's herbs during our annual foray to their greenhouses. We always arrive with a wish list of things to buy after reading their catalogue and leave with those, plus a few. We planted the verbena and then promptly forgot about it, mostly because it was crowded out by Borage. (I'm not a big fan of borage and every now and then it just appears in masses. I don't remember planting it. It sprawls and leans and hogs space. The flowers are supposed to be good in salads but to me they resemble a hairy spider and I couldn't imagine eating one. We spotted the lemon verbena, read the label and decided to try making some tea. It was the most soothing and refreshing tea I have ever had. I want to grow enough to have a bit all winter. A couple of lemon verbena plants will be purchased this spring. They are a tender perennial and I didn't do a particularly good job bringing mine it. You should not plant them in the soil but keep them in pots. Another way is to plant them in the soil and then make cuttings, which I think I might try too. For the next part of the tour, click here.
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