Well, it's been a while, but I just wanted to share something that I am excited about, and that is the "Cage of Life" garden. Twenty feet by thirty feet with an 8 foot tall perimeter. Safe from nibbling deer and defecating cats. My garden oasis! It has been getting better every year, as I feed more and more compost and soil amendments into it. It is nice to see the soil fluff up and the weeds lose some footing as the time and energy spent cumulates into more pay-off in terms of ease of digging and overall plant health. This year is sure to be a good one!
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View from outside the "Cage". An assortment of deer resistant plants adorn the perimeter.
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Entering the Cage and looking to your right you see the garlic patch, which has an A-frame of deer fencing going over it which will serve as a trellis/arbor for my recently-planted melons. And to the right there is a nice lilac-pink sweet pea with some pink flowering thyme growing as a groundcover around it.
Behind the sweet pea, as you make your way to the right, are some of the first little tomatoes forming on the Atomic Grape tomato plant. The Atomic Grape is a hybrid created by a local tomato breeder who has actually gotten a lot of recognition for his outrageously colorful and flavorful and sometimes oddly-shaped tomato varieties. This variety produces football-shaped thumb-sized fruit that are streaked with gold, purple, red, and greenish tones and are remarkably sweet, while still remaining somewhat firm. You gotta try 'em!
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| Immature fruit of the Atomic Grape tomato. That deep purple hue is indicative of anthocyanin pigments, which are antioxidants like blueberries have. |
And continuing to the right of the garden entrance is a robust little eggplant. I think this one is a round green type from Thailand. I bought it on a whim from the nursery--we'll see how the fruit tastes! The plant is sure looking good, though. I have always loved the ornamental beauty of eggplants.
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| Eggplant |
And then there is the pepper section with mostly sweet peppers: 3 Red Marconi, 2 Sweet Banana, a Hatch Green Chile, and a Poblano. Also, in a separate area, is a Cayenne, the "bad boy" of the bunch in terms of heat. These have been putting on some real deep green growth and seem to be very happy with the bed I made for them, which included homemade compost and some organic granular fertilizer.
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| Various peppers |
Here is a shot of the aforementioned recently-planted melons. This side of the arbor is "Ha'Ogen", a very aromatic green-fleshed melon thought likely to have originated in Hungary. On the opposite side of the A-frame are Charentais, which are French heirlooms that are orange-fleshed and extremely sweet.
The garlic that is behind the melons should start to turn yellow soon and flop over. After allowing it to dry for a couple weeks, I will be able to harvest it. At that point I could try planting lettuce there to utilize the shade that the melon vines will soon be providing... we'll see.
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| Young melon plants in front of garlic |
Here is "The Stump", an old walnut tree burl that my old neighbor William helped me pull out of the ground when I first moved here. I remember watching him whack away at the roots with an axe and then rig his truck's winch up and haul it out. It looks very nice as a tabletop in the garden. Recently it has been the home to this collection of seed-grown madrone trees (on top) and a couple purchased manzanita bushes (on ground, in front) which I am letting grow and should be planted this Fall.
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| The Stump |
It is looking like a great year for onions, which is nice because last year my onions all "bolted", which means they sent their energy into making flowers instead of big roots, leaving a very skimpy amount of onion for me to eat. But look at these honkers!!! The tops have bent over and they are now in their "curing" stage, where they are allowed to dry in place for a couple of weeks before harvesting (just like the garlic are going to do).
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Approximately 25 red onions (foreground) and 20 or so yellow (background).
Also you can see a "Helda" bean, front left, starting to wind its way up some twine. |
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| A little row of "Heldas" growing beneath the canopy of some volunteer sunflowers. I figured I would let the sunflowers do their thing even though they block some sunlight. Maybe they will form a nice scaffolding for the vining beans? I did remove some lower leaves of the sunflowers to allow a bit more light down. |
This back corner of the garden is starting to get taken over by a milkweed plant
Asclepias speciosa, which is really hitting its stride in year 4, sending runners up 6 feet away from its parent plant. I am glad it is doing well, but I am trying to encourage it to colonize outward in the other direction, since it is safe from deer, due to it's milky white sap.
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Asclepias speciosa
(I am hoping to catch that cat in the background and have it fixed soon) |
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| Milkweed growing with pink Yarrow, as well as the orange/yellow Calendula which is fading from its winter glory. |
There are many species of milkweed and they are (all?) host plants for the caterpillars of the Monarch butterfly. I have yet to find any on my plants, but I hear that the bigger your area of milkweed, the more likely the butterflies are to find it, so *fingers crossed*!
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You can see how this species earned the nickname "Showy Milkweed"
Ooo la la! |
And then along this back side are some tomato plants. The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea. They have all rebounded very nicely after starting their lives out with a little frostburn shortly after I planted them (I should have waited!). I have been patrolling them vigilantly and pruning lower leaves to ensure no disease takes hold. We had a bad problem with blight on our tomatoes at work this year and I didn't want any of that in my garden. So far so good!
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| Tomatoes and Basil |
Alright, thanks for taking the time to check out my hobby! I'll end with a native Soap Lily blossoming in front of a purple Foxglove. The soap lily sent up a flower stalk this year (the first since I planted about 4 years ago) that is taller than me, with the top 2 feet branching out into these clusters of recurved star-shaped white flowers. Very graceful. The root of the plant contains saponin and was supposedly used by indigenous people as a soap, among other uses. I just read that a plant takes about 10 years from germination to flower.
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| Soap Lily in front of Foxglove |
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