2021 Veggie Zone Garden Tour

2021 Veggie Zone Garden Tour

 

 Heeey! Veggie season is here and we are going nuts with our Veggie Zone expansion. It is so awesome we almost can't stand it. I'm working on a building video before and after the construction. For now I'm just doing a current tour of how it is rolling in mid June. Things are just starting to pop, my husband is very impatient, but in our mild coastal climate it is just starting to warm up. 

 So a reminder that we are total gardening newbs. We said that when we found our dream property, we would start growing veggies and learning to can and preserve them. And get cats. And chickens. We moved here just over 4 yrs ago, and we've done everything but the chickens so far. At our old house we did zero gardening. I had like 3 houseplants I got as a gift, and hubs would mow the lawn and sometimes butcher innocent shrubs nearly to death. We started out here knowing almost nothing. Just google and youtube and two people in love. haha. 

 Anyway! We are super proud of ourselves, we learn a little more each year and grow a little more. This year we went a little nuts like I said. We went from 2 beds and 1 Salsa House... to 11 freaking beds, 2 Salsa Houses, and bunch of 25 gal pots. We had no problems filling everything haha. As we are now total garden nerds and just loving every minute of it. However! It is starting to hit me just how much volume we will have to deal with soon... as the chief preservation officer, I have my concerns. Def going to implement a porch dropoff program!

 I made a video tour of the Veg Zone's current state, yacking in detail about all the nerd stuff. Oohing and Aahing all over my beautiful babies. Ha. Yep I'm a garden mom now whatever. Proud of it. Veggie Zone Tour - 2021 New Improved Awesome! Beautiful! Newbie Skills

  

Ok on with the tour. The front gate built up to resist deer, we keep it closed mostly. Even in the day when our dog Luke likes to go pee on everything. Turkey. The cats now enjoy it as a dog oasis, so that's nice. Esp Ron likes to visit. A big change we made was to scrape up the surface soil that was basically a walking trap due to all the rodent tunnels. We used it to fill the new beds, and laid down weedcloth with redwood bark. So nice to walk on! And I love how it looks. Less weedwacking too. Lovely.

 

 

 

 View from inside the gate below... yeah it doesn't suck. We are surrounded by redwood trees, which creates some nice shade in the mornings, but full sun the rest of the afternoon. Stu built the Little House for me, which is adorable. Potting shed slash hammock porch, cute as a button! Bride of Salsa House in the back, and some of the new recycled steel beds made from discarded building materials. Love them!

A close up shot of the beds, they are actually 3 panels tall but we had to set this into the dirt a bit to level it on a slope. Stu topped them with wood scraps and I think they look great. I have some better video of them I'll post later, with the progress of the whole space. It was quite a project!

Panning to the right a little, this white bed was our original bed. Year one I put everything in that one bed! Just to see what happened, I read a lot of square foot gardening stuff and went for it. Everything lived, but I learned a whole lot that first year. The tubbies are 20 gal pots we use for growing shrubs, and last year we had gopher issues for the first time. So everything we had in the ground went into these pots. This year we have 3 pea pots and like 4 potato pots. Everything looking good! Original Salsa House in the background, now pepper house.

Continuing to pan right, we have our new shady hangout area. Ooooh I love this part! The garden is now such a great space to spend time, so pretty and I don't know... there's definitely a vibe. This canopy was my first show canopy like 20 yrs ago, still going strong! buy EZup! It spent the past 3 yrs outside over our big picnic table but we just got new and improved canopies for our BBQ Zone so we moved it over here. SO perfect!! Keeps me from having to go inside for my heat breaks, possibly never to return. ha. 

 Walking straight back, here again is our original raised bed. This year it is now for herbs and strawberries. I thought the rosemary protected the strawberries near it last year... but now something is eating them. Always a bug battle. I'm spreading oregano around and put out some ant traps. We'll see!

 Moving further back to the steel beds, we have 4 in a row back here. 3 with trellises for zukes, cukes, and beans. The last shadiest one is for greens. We put some extra flowers around this year and these cosmos are going off. So pretty!