Welcome to My Garden

It's been a little over two years since I first plunged my hands in the fertile Northern Californian soil, but I feel like I just started gardening.  I'm by no means a master gardener (I hope to be someday), but I do my homework.  I hope all you gardeners out there, especially the ones in zone 9, consider my garden journal entries a kind of garden club where we can share ideas, tips and stories together.


Let's go on a little stroll through my garden.  It currently consists of seven raised beds, a white picket fence, and a garden gate with thornless roses creeping up the arbor that shades the gate.  I'd love to take credit for all this, but besides the abandoned, overgrown beds, the garden was this gorgeous when we moved in as renters.  You'll have to use your imagination for the entry because I couldn't capture a satisfactory photo of it.

Here is bed 1.  This was taken August 8.  We've got about 8 pumpkins so far.

Bed 2 is a currently a gourd bed.  We planted decorative gourds and crafters gourds.  My plan is to make bowls, serving ladles, and birdhouses out of them with my children.  Depending on how they turn out, they could make sweet gifts.  I got this idea from P. Allen Smith. (I've wanted to do this for a while.)  This was also taken early August....

.. and here are some cutie little gourditas that we've got growing now.

Bed 3.  I just seeded it yesterday with celery and heirloom Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach Seeds.  Anticipating the sprouts is so much fun!  There are tomatoes finishing their summer run up at the top and at the bottom are canteloupes who decided to show up late in the season...

They are small, but soooo goood.

Bed 4.  For some reason, I love this bed.  I think it's the way the light hits it.  I've had the hardest time growing anything in there due to mimosa runners and once free-roaming chickens deciding it looked like a great salad bar, but I keep weeding, fertilizing, and planting.  Right now, it has Danver's half-long carrots, Dolla Rossa Lettuce, Dutch cabbage, and I just planted kale in the places where the chickens had there way in it (they are now happily free-ranging in a large chicken run constructed by my handy husband).

Bed 5: The corn is obviously done, and we're getting the last of the Contender Bush Beans, which are really tasty.  I'll be replanting this bed in a few days.

Bed 6.  This is my second favorite bed.  Parsley, anyone?  That's what's growing to the left.  The open patch has cilantro seeds hopefully germinating, then there are some tomatoes finishing up, some basil behind the tomatoes, and more cilantro seeds to the far right.

Bed 7.  Lots of happy little kale and cabbage sprouts!

That's my garden for now.  I love how gardens are always changing, growing and yielding little nourishing treats with the seasons.  It doesn't get more fresh and local than the backyard.  :)

I'm sharing this at Barn Hop & Farmgirl Friday.