This may not be quite the garden of Eden
but I would like to welcome you to it anyway. We have worked very
hard, Claudia and I, for the last 5 years to make this little
corner of Paradise as beautiful and chemical free as it is
possible while investing all the time and energy we've got
instead of the money we don't have. When you are in it you can
almost see the Ocean. You can definitely hear it at times.
When we moved here there was already somewhat of a
vegetable garden but it had been neglected for some time.The main
thing we did the first few years was to amend the soil. We added
several tons of eel grass and sea weeds such as kelp, with manure, whatever dead leaves we
could get and all the compost we could make. We needed to rebuilt
the soil with organic matter so it could rejuvenate it's living
population.
The soil was very sandy and had a hard time retaining
the moisture. We could water for a solid hour in the early
morning and the plants were almost dehydrated by noon. You can
see from the picture that our garden has a good sun exposure with
the South being toward the upper right corner and the East at the
left. The water body in front is too salty to be of any use
unfortunately.
One of the first things we did was to divide the garden
lenghtwise and to plant perennials all along the middle with a
path on both sides. We introduced a few varieties of irises and 2 different colors of bergamots (beebalm). Among them we planted some shasta daisies and golden marguerites and feverfew. You can see some dark red extremely velvety snapdragons and lots of lilies. Here and there we planted beautiful Echinecaea which we started from seeds. Halfway down the row we planted a yellow Rosa rugosa (Agnes) which bloomed for almost a solid month last summer.
Then at the East end of the garden we planted 3 different
kinds of strawberries that produce from the middle of June to the end of July; about 60 plants all together. We planted about the same amount of asparagus; 2 different kinds in a bed close by and maybe 40 raspberry plants; again a summer variety and a fall variety, with a few black currents and some blackberries.
A good vegetable garden would not be complete without a herb
section which we planted at this end (same picture bottom center)
which is closer to the house. There were already some oregano
that had gone more or less wild but that was very decorative and
excellent at attraction bees and wasps which are very useful as
pollinators. We added some thyme, sage, greek oregano, winter
savory and one plant of French tarragon.
Early in the spring and late in the Fall we like
to plant green manure, mostly annual rye or buckweath which we
turn in before it self seed. This is a good way to incorporate
nitrogen without having to use chemical fertilizer. It does not
cost very much, requires a little labour but has the advantage of
suffocating many weeds (or shall we say undesirable
plants).
