My Kitchen Garden 2011

I wanted to add pictures of my garden from last summer.  What a year it turned out to be.   It was so, so dry that nothing would come up.  With the hard winds and no moisture it was a battle to get the seeds going.  But then, in July, the monsoons hit, and we got about 12 inches in one month, we didn't have to water, things  just grew and grew.  (Including bine-weed, which I have serious problems with. SERIOUSLY bad problems.)
In 2010 we designed it, but only got half of the beds made and built up.  Lots of shoveling.  This year we almost finished the other side.  But then the pumpkins took over so I ran out of room.  I am trying to convert the raised beds to lasagna beds, it helps with the weeds and makes for some awesome soil full of earthworms.

Cow elk checking on the tomatoes.  Thank goodness for the fence.  These are pics of the garden in April when  I started the tomatoes.  I don't think it is really worth the effort.  My tomatoes had a lot of disease by the end of the summer.

Don't even look over here ladies.  In the forefront are the wall-of-waters.  They even kept the tomatoes warm when it snowed on May 1 and got down to 23 degrees.

Ivy took all these garden pictures.

 I started these tom. with wall-of-waters back in April, way early, they still didn't do too much.  I had those horned worms on them.  Those things are nasty.  I also had a little rattlesnake coiled up under one.  I am not much of a farm-girl after those kind of experiences. Gardening looses it's luster for a while.  I am just glad the little girls never came across one out there.  We don't have many snakes here.

Stupid coat hanging on the fence covering my pretty lace vine.  I love that thing, the vine not the coat; it grew 20 feet this year.  I planted another west of the gate, you can see it, it almost caught up to the one that is 2 years old.  I think I'll add one to the border of the garden every year.

Harvest time, a little bit of a mess.  I meant to plant butternut, but I can't read I guess, so I planted buttercup.  It is so good with butter and brown sugar.  I swear, 3 plants yeilded 2 wheel-barrel loads.  Enough for a family all winter.

Cinderellas, my favorite things pumpkins.

Cosmos Corner

Color anyone?

Squash in the middle, potatoes, cauliflower (this didn't taste good) broccoli, the bees took it over and we let them.  French Marigolds along the fence with dill, and a bunch of fun stuff that grew like crazy.  I had to pull up a lot of the borage.  It took over, what in the world do you do with borage?  

I just wanted to document this. I need a list of all I grew, but I am not that organized.