Progress continues. I still have a lot of plants to get into the ground but I am slowly making progress.
Today my photography assistant followed me around while I was taking these photos. She did not join me in the front yard garden because my husband finished the fence.
The big swale is surrounded in netting. The deer were destroying the asparagus bed and eating all the new shoots on the fruit trees. The chickens were also doing too much damage to the berm. Now the chickens and deer are leaving it alone.
We are letting the grass grow on the hill and mowing around patches of flowers in the rest of the yard for the bees. The clipping from the mower are being used as mulch for the veggie beds.
Thanks to much needed rain I have a full rain barrel to water the recently plantings with.
The chickens and the bees love this bird bath.
This one is just for the bees. I have 3 more planter trays that I picked up at a flea market that I need to set up as bee watering stations.
The coop has been moved! I will not have a 2 inches of water in the run next spring!
The herb bed is filling in nicely. I have a few more things to plant in it and I need to finish weeding the grass out if it.
Here is a shot of a bunch of perennials in 3 different beds. I still have a good deal of plants to get in the ground.
Peppers, tomatoes and herbs.
These are most of my main annual garden beds. There is one more to the left with onion sets and peas in it.
Here is the onion and pea bed. I had a mix of greens, peas, carrots, parsnips and turnip seeds in planted here but the crab grass grew first so the peas and onion sets were the only ones to survive the weeding.
Here is a shot from not quite the bottom of the hill.
Peppers, eggplant and tomatillos
pole beans, snap peas, crab grass with carrots and parnips, bush beans, and assorted brassicas in this bed.
I have planted a lot of peppers this year and I still have more to plant. I am trying to find a good short season sweet pepper so I am trying a dozen or so varieties.
My large tomato bed with the herb bed in the background.
Here is another shot of the annual beds
These will be planted everywhere!
I love having fresh strawberries. The herb bed is filling in nicely.
The bees are loving the comfrey.
Here is the flower bed. The poppies are just starting to bloom.
I let a lambs quarter go to seed hoping the chickens would like the seeds. They don't. They did manage to seed an mulched bed by dust bathing in it. It will take me weeks to weed this out since the keep popping up.
This is my view from the gate. I also planted grapes on next to each of the gate posts.
I planted corn seeds in this covered bed. They haven't sprouted yet. Next year this will better protected location will be the new home of the asparagus bed.
Now that we have deer netting around the big swale I need to create some mulch for the peach tree that the mullen and comfrey have been hiding from the deer.
The deer have worked hard to try and destroy my asparagus bed.
I am still working on planting the big swale berm. I added hazelnuts, sea buckthorn, a crab apple, potatoes, sweet potatoes to the fruit trees, buckwheat, irises, daffodils, garlic, shallots, asparagus, comfrey, and fruit trees I planted last year.
I will be putting my excess celery and pepper seedlings in here. Sunflowers, nasturtiums and other goodies will find there way in too.
I let my honeybees get crowded and they started producing new queens. I split the hives yesterday and the growing queen cells are in nuk boxes with some frames to get the new hives going. Hopefully I can keep the original frames from swarming. This is my first year keeping bees and I am sure I will make more mistakes but with any luck I will have 4 strong hives this year. I didn't take any photos since it was my first time doing this.
