Last year I put in a potager type of veggie garden. I laid out some of the squares a little too big to lean into and harvest, weed, etc. They're 6 x 8, the ones that are too large. I really thought I'd be able to lean across 3 feet, but apparently not. (I need to go to yoga!)
So.....some of them have teepee types of things in the center for height and to grow things up.
I'm trying to think of what to put in the center of the others to take up space, something I won't have to get into the center too often to care for. Maybe a rose in one of them. Maybe a birdbath in another.
What to put in the others? I have quite a few (9 in all). Any ideas?
Veggie Garden Design
So you need something somewhat tall for the center because the stuff around the edges might shade out shorter stuff? How about cosmos? Or any tall flowers like that, really. Sunflowers? As long as it doesn't shade the stuff on the other side. Not sure how they're laid out. Trying to think of some herbs that grow taller but I'm drawing a blank.
I'm not sure if it's too late to plant potatoes in your area, but that might be an option. Or if you need shorter stuff, any root crop - onions, garlic, beets . . .
I like growing cypress vine and purple hyacinth bean vine on tee pees. Morning glories/moonflowers are pretty but might not be the best choice if you don't want them to reseed. Maybe some sweet peas? But not close to the snow peas, if you grow them, so you don't get the edible and inedible ones mixed up.
Sounds like you've got a really nice setup, even if you can't reach it all. Just more excuse to plant flowers, I say!
Pineapple sage for the hummingbirds? That gets to be about 3-4 feet tall. Some lemon grass?
I've never grown dill or fennel - don't they grow tall?
We plant lavender, beebalm, rosemary or Ind.Tomatoes in the middle of 4 x 10 beds with shorter plants and veggies around the outside. My kids can't reach in too far to harvest taller veggies and it seems to work for them. Bamboo bean trellis is the center of one for this year, growing lettuce on the shaded side. You could teepee the center 3' for beans and string the connections?
Not sure about fennel but my Dill gets about 5' tall maybe higher - lol. And when it flowers it's great to attract pollinators.
Is it the height, or that you can't reach the middle? If it's reach, maybe make a walk across the middle, so it becomes two 6 x 3 beds. (You could even go nuts with the trellising to make sort of an arbor, so that the viney stuff could grow up and you could easily pick it from behind.)
There's a ?japanese system that puts a compost tower in the center. The name is totally escaping me. Purists have this whole intensive crop rotation, but basically the idea is that the good composty stuff just leaches down into the bed, and you just throw your clippings and scraps in at the top.
But yeah, fountains and sculpture are cool, too.
realbirdlady - I've seen or heard about the compost tower thingy, only I thought is was more like a wall. Two parallel fences with compost in the middle like a sandwich. I've never tried this, but it's intriguing.
Be careful where you grow fennel; apparently it inhibits a lot of other veggies. Dill also can get out of hand and take over.
What about a row of flowers in the middle? I buy Ferry-Morse's annual cutting flowers packets and sow them in areas where I want some eye candy; it works really well for potager-style gardens especially.
When I revamped my garden I made my rows 30" wide, with 18" paths between them, à la Elliot Coleman. He does 12" paths but I like wider ones. I put down landscape cloth on the paths and refurbish them each year with wood chips. I can stand on the paths and get to any part of my rows, and it works really well. The rows are the same width as our wooden landscape rake, and I can put plastic caps on two or three of the tines, spaced evenly, and use those to draw straight furrows down my rows to mark them for planting seeds or seedlings.
Last year I had a row I thought I wasn't going to use, so I sowed a couple of packets of those Ferry-Morse annuals. Later a friend brought me some bean seeds that she'd just picked up in France, so I sowed them in the same row. It was a bit messy but I got both beans and flowers. This year I have flowers coming up in all the rows around that area, too.
I'm still pulling fennel from all over 2 different areas of the property (one being the potager) that a former owner put in. (It does smell really good as I'm pulling it!)
I like the idea of putting a block of flowers in the center. Maybe outlined with boxwood. I still haven't decided if I'm outlining the main beds in boxwood or brick or ???
Dividedsky, I have pineapple sage in a wooden barrel planter. I love that plant!
I have circles between the squares and I was putting some garden art and planted things in those. Now I think I'm going to put those all into the centers of the blocks instead. So far I have these ideas:
scarecrow
teepee type of trellis that I'm growing a veggie up (I will have to walk in there to harvest)
a rusty iron tiered wagon thing that I'll plant with annuals and trailing plants
wooden barrel planted
an iron wagon type of thing that I'm putting a planted galvanized tub on - it has a tall piece attached and I'll train an ornamental up that
I have 9 beds, so need 4 more ideas. I already have a lot of the ideas in other parts of this potager. For instance, I have sunflowers growing elsewhere, altho a bushy variety would look really great in one of the beds! I don't necessarily want everything in the center of these beds to be tall. I thought about a very large pot with trailing plants coming out of it. But those pots are very costly and I can't afford one right now.
Here is a photo of the general outline of the potager. We're dealing with the 9 filled in blocks. I have a long row of dahlias in the center. Some day I want to put an arbor in the center of that long row with built in seating. Then I want to have a small picket fence extending out from each side of the arbor bench that will be purely decorative to grow things up against.
And on the other side I have 6 squares that are laid out in alternating rows. I wanted to give it sort of a patchwork quilt kind of look. If you're flying overhead. Which so many people often do. LOL
So those 4 round circles in the middle of the 9 blocks won't be there as I'll put those objects in the centers instead.
Gwen, how large is your entire garden area? Looks like you have lots of room. And it's a lovely design.
How would boxwood work for lining the beds? Wouldn't it get tall, and wouldn't you then have those roots contending with your veggies for moisture? We have a brick walk going through our potager, and then the little paths between rows. I do try not to step on the rows if I can avoid it, but when I'm drawing my furrows with the rake I have to.
Here's my garden.. I also have a few low-growing flowers along the edge of the brick walk on some of the rows, to add a touch more color. And I intermingle Victoria blue salvia, marigolds, and basil among my tomato tripods and between peppers and eggplants. We have a bistro set - small round table and two chair, plus a matching loveseat, in metal on the square area in front of the greenhouse. I've been looking for a small birdbath but haven't found any that would go well.
It's roughly 40 x 60. I was thinking of doing the real low sort of boxwood. I don't think the roots would be an issue. I have drip irrigation for each indidual bed. They are all on the same zone but each of the 15 beds has its own spigot. I also have a spigot in the dahlia bed and at the bottom right of the diagram, just to the right of the gate (and covered by that round emblem thing), I have a tall spigot because I eventually want to build a potting bench with running water. On the opposide side of that fence, which is part of the orchard, I'm going to build another set of compost bins. Our other bins are way far away.
I don't have to do boxwood. I just want something to keep the mounded dirt up. That way, I can let the chickens out in the winter without having to redraw the beds every year. It took me a very long time to get the beds strung out. Then I had irrigation put in at the end of last year and it completely tossed the whole place. I'm still working on getting it laid back out.
I do intermingle a lot of flowers and ornamentals throughout. I like lots of color. I spray painted the tomato cages yellow last year and loved it. I like lots of garden art - little pieces of interest scattered here and there.
What program did you use to draw your garden? Looks so much more professional than mine!
I put in asparagus this year but it didn't come up. :( Also, my artichokes from last year, which I did from seed so still were small at the end (but respectable I thought), did not appear to come back. Very bummed about those two!
I was going to put a birdbath in one of the beds but Judi pointed out that I'd get bird droppings. I could put it in a bed with root crops, but am wondering if I want to encourage birds in there! Eventually I'll put strawberries back in and birds love to go after those. They already eat all our cherries and hardy kiwi. I guess there's a limit on how much I want to feed them! Still, a birdbath would be lovely.
I have electricity just outside the fence, so could eventually have a water feature in there somewhere.
Well, off to the master gardener plant sale (I'm working at it). Will try and restrain myself. Already brought home a bunch of stuff yesterday after set up was done...
Gwen, I looked all over for a program to sketch out my garden and finally ended up with plain old PhotoShop Elements, since I use it to massage my photos already and the learning curve wasn't high. But it's picky and time consuming. And I still have to make a few changes to my diagram. What I do is print it out each spring and use it to figure out that year's rotations, writing them in in pencil. I'm trying to do a three- or four-year rotation but it's hard because my sections aren't of equal sizes.
I love to have birds in my garden. The orioles and wrens eat garden pests and the tree swallows keep the area relatively bug-free, although nothing stops the gnats in the spring but Skin-So-Soft. Sometimes I sit on the little patio and watch bluebirds and hummingbirds working their way through the flowers and vegetables; it's really nice. I guess they go after my strawberries to some extent, but you can always use bird-netting. What really attacks my strawberries is the box turtles, though.
When I set up my garden the way it is now, I banished the chickens. It was more important for me to maintain my rows and paths than to have them go after bugs and deliver fertilizer on the spot. We used to turn them into the garden all winter but not any more. It's a tradeoff...
Good luck exercising restraint at the plant sale!
We don't have as many 'bad' bugs here as other parts of the country do. In fact, slugs are really my only problem. I one time had a few aphids in the greenhouse but they didn't last long. We do have mosquitoes during part of the summer, but they don't go after plants, just people!
And we don't have turtles! My goodness, I didn't realize how lucky we are!!!
I know; when we lived off the coast of Bellingham we couldn't understand at first why no one had screens in their windows!
Gwen, I can vouch for Greenhous gal's garden design. It was very inspiring for me to see it last summer.
Thanks, Jan! It's pretty much the same this year, allowing for some crop rotation. And DH had a wall put up behind the fig trees, hoping that would help them overwinter better. AND we put up a new greenhouse in the same place as the old one. But as we all know, it's a LOT of work!
Pictures, please!
Here's the new greenhouse, with Chouette, my labradoodle, at the doorway:
And here's a longer view of the garden; you can see the brick walk and the little patio in front of the greenhouse:
Nice gh! Mine is not as wide, so gets cluttered very quickly. And I need to get rid of all the surrounding weeds and cutsify it up!
These are the tomato poles I just put up, with the wall visible in the background. It's hard to get it all in one photo.
I really like the brick walkway. I sure wish I had that in my potager and in front of the gh. Our gh is nowhere near the garden.
Expecting some big tomatoes there, eh? ;) The one year I put up a very tall support for them, they did reach the top. I guess they'll grow as big as you want them. Funny, now that I think of it, every year they only grow as tall as their supports....
Yes, I do spend a bit of time cutesifying things up. When we got the new greenhouse, because the sides are glass I was worried that it would look too cluttered, so I went to Target and got a bunch of green plastic containers in several sizes to conceal stuff and make everything look neater.
Here's the fig wall, with raspberry bushes in the foreground and a row of peas.
This message was edited May 10, 2010 5:04 PM
I hit send by mistake!
I tend to grow indeterminate tomatoes, so they do get pretty big. We really like the brick walk, and the greenhouse is in a great place; I also use it as storage for garden tools. To the right of the greenhouse there's an arbor with benches and another potting bench, plus a sink, which is really handy.
Here's the garden sink:
By the way, the poles in the foreground of the photo of the fig wall are my bean lattices, not my tomatoes. The tomato tripods are behind the bean fencing.
This message was edited May 10, 2010 5:10 PM
Very nice. I'm sure that brick wall will help in keeping things warm.
Where does your sink drain? I have had water put in and saved a place for a potting bench with sink but other than having it drain into the garden (which would be fine), not sure how to plumb it. I'm thinking to have mine drain through a flexible hose that I can then just aim toward wherever I want water to go at that moment. There will be compost bins on the opposite side so I will probably want to water than down most of the time.
Gwen, it drains into that white square-sided bucket under the sink. When it starts getting full I pick it up and deposit the water wherever it's needed. It's a bit of a pain but it works.
We also put in a white hose for potable water so we can drink out of it if we're thirsty. I don't know how much difference that makes, but it seemed safer.
I've seen a couple gardens that have adorable drinking fountains. I'm hoping for one of those someday!
That would definitely be cool. I used to see bubblers that you could put on the end of a hose, but I haven't noticed them for sale for a long time.
Gwendalou and greenhouse_gal - your photos and garden-descriptions are inspirations! Thanks so much for sharing :)
Thanks so much for looking! As you can imagine, gardens are for sharing as well as for the usual purposes. It's so much fun to make them pretty, and then you want people to SEE them!