Well, my pot ghetto is only a few steps from my kitchen door so that I am over there often. I soon see any problems that might arise. And I do have to water those pots every day.

Not all my veggies are in pots. I have 62 tomato plants in various tomato beds. When I dream of having a farm I see myself with at least 200 tomato plants. And I have peppers and cucumbers and beans all in ground. My dream hobby farm is really an oversized veggie garden with chickens.

I just love to grow veggies. Love growing them. The great part about living in typical suburbia is that no one else around grows veggies so I can easily give them all away. My neighbors and friends all look forward to summer veggie season because they know they get free fresh veggies.

Ok, so here are some views of my yard veggie areas. Starting with a view from the driveway pot ghetto looking back to the back yard.


Bean Towers.


Tomato beds. I have 62 tomatoes planted.



I even have tomatoes planted in front of my porch!


Views of the side yard and the tomato and veggie beds.


I also have lots of cucumbers planted. Those I grow in the path that runs thru the middle of my backyard daylily beds.

Everything looks so good, and so NOT weedy!

One of the guineas was AWOL for a couple of weeks so we suspect a coyote or something got it. This morning as DH was turning the compost tumbler he spotted a guinea with 10 little fuzzy things following her! she must have been sitting on a next in the neighbor's field where we couldn't find her. Now, if they can survive tonight so Matt can catch them and put them inside tomorrow we'll be okay. I don't know, It's pretty dangerous out there for them.

Mostly the veggie beds mulched with the hay stay weed free.

I hope the little fuzzes survive the night and stay safe.

I don't think I would make much of an actual Farmer. I get tired just being a gardener.

Today I dug up the backyard Tall Bearded Iris and relocated the healthy plants and threw away the rotting ones. It was a bigger job than I had thought it would be. But now the garden space is cleared, the iris replanted and the newly made veggie bed is mulched with straw. Next year I will be planting my pepper plants here. I laid out and measured, 6 rows fit so 6 rows it will be! Plus two more cucumber trellis sections so I can grow more cucumbers. I want to add more cukes next year. And I absolutely had to find a spot that works well for peppers. This years mish mash approach of pepper plants scattered around here and there was not overly successful.

So I am happy with my work today but already tired.

I spent yesterday afternoon getting a fallen tree off one of the pasture fences. It had been killed in the drought of 2011 and was laden down with grapevines such that it managed to fall toward the prevailing winds into the pasture instead of down the riverbank as hoped. It was such a mess that I contemplated just hooking it up to the tractor and pulling it all to the burn pile and then rebuilding the fence. However sanity won over, so I sawed and hacked and chopped until the fence was exposed. Amazingly it was nearly intact! I hope tomorrow is not as windy as today as I would like to get the whole jungle of a burn pile incinerated before the county enacts a burn ban. We have a pretty serious drought going again this summer.

Wow, you did a lot more than I did. Sorry about the damage to your fence!

Picked summer squashes and tomatoes again today. Typical summer day harvest.

So my spring grown Crimson Clover and Harry Vetch was dead and dried up and long done so I pulled both out today and replanted new Crimson Clover and Hairy Vetch in the same spots. I know these are supposed to be cover crops to till into the soil but I plant them mainly to attract bees and as food for the bees. And I plant them because I think the flowers are so pretty.

The die off is not surprising, they grow quickly, flower and then die off. Annuals. But I just replant.

Tomatoes!




Cavilli Zucchini, 4 Golden Egg Summer Squash, an Eggplant, cherry and grape tomatoes.

Here is my cucumber section. I call it Cucumber Ally! Actually it is in the main path that goes thru my backyard daylily bed. I needed space to plant my cucumbers and this was it.


Besides cucumber ally for the first time ever this year, I decided to do a second or late planting of cucumbers. This way hoping for a continued supply of cukes after the ones in cucumber ally are done for. Cucumbers are never a long lived crop around here, the vines get really ratty looking late summer and need to be pulled up.

So I have Orient Express and Suyo Long cucumber seedlings planted that I had started myself from seed.

Rita you really are quite a farmer. Lovely produce!

I have grand dreams and am overrun with tomatoes!

I had this flower bed area. Actually it was a tall bearded iris bed. But the iris just were not doing well there. I lost most of them to rotting over the winter. So I decided to convert the area back into a veggie bed. It actually used to be part of a veggie bed before I converted it to iris!

So I dug out and relocated any healthy iris and tossed out the rotters. Now I have this four foot wide section. Forgot to measure how long it is.




Then I mulched it with straw and put out some bamboo stakes at the side to measure out where I intend to be having rows of pepper plants next year. And I have two green fence post stakes to show where I intend to add two more cucumber trellis. You really need to enlarge the pictures to see them.



For now I just have some root veggies planted in there and will use it for whatever I plant for the fall. But next spring I will have a nice place to plant my peppers instead of having them stuck here and there all around the garden. And I will have space for the more cucumbers I want to grow.

No wasted space in your gardens!

Would someone like to start an August thread?

Okay, I just did. Hope I didn't break any etiquette rules!

Nope, no wasted space here. My yard is crammed.

Here is the new thread for August. The thread "August, a hot time of the Summer." in Farming forum