Our Organic Garden Beds

Ok, first, this doesn't have a whole lot to do with this post about our gardens, except that I happened to upload these two pics of a fabulous raw "hummus pizza" dinner we shared out in our "tree house." Preston and his culinary genius created this raw flat bread made of squash, flax, and herbs, and we dehydrated it (low temps as to preserve the enzymes needed for digestion) in our new Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator. We then topped it with a raw cashew hummus (I like the taste of raw hummus with a cashew base rather than soaked chickpeas--recipe to come soon!) and garden greens, tomatoes, avacadoes, and cilantro from the garden you are about to see!!! And a summer favorite: San Pellegrino with lemon and of course, cherries!! So refreshing!!

Now, on to the garden.

Preston and I have two raised beds in our little backyard, and this year, they are yeilding a lot of food, especially greens, and I wanted to share it with you!

The Birth of our Raised Beds

Last year Preston built them and we spent an afternoon literally lugging dirt in 5 gallon buckets from bins in the trunk of our little Corolla (no truck, no wheelbarrow lol) into the garden beds. The dirt was...eh...not the best. It didn't drain very well, and we didn't have any finished compost having just moved in that year, but we added lots of soil amendments and worked on it for a while, and when it drained ok, we crossed our fingers and planted our garden. Well, it was already June by that time, and we travelled three times that month and I'm sure it dried out at the pivitol times when it was sprouting, but amazingly, it yeilded some really good greens among other things, once again reminding us that nature is a miracle, and a lot of the time, it is this simple: You plant it, and it grows. There certainly are a lot of things to learn about gardening, and I've read so many books, but I still feel like I'm just beginning. I'm finding the best method is trial and error, as well as intuition, and working along with nature in a beautiful co-creation.

Gratefully, this year, our garden has done wonderfully well. In the fall, we left the roots in the soil and chopped up everything else on top, and we sprinkled what unfinished compost we had on the beds along with some dead leaves. We left it to decompose, and a lot of it did, and I'm happy to report that there were worms and other creepy crawlers in the soil when we prepared the garden bed this spring.

This spring, much earlier than last year we began to prepare our garden beds by removing the leftover leaves that had not yet decomposed, and we put them in our compost buckets.


We then added a soil amendment that had kelp meal and compost from cotton burrs, and some Yum Yum mix, and very gently incorporated it (as not to disturb the mircoorganisms too much.)

Then we planted, and waited...

And one day...

Tiny baby curly and dino kale sprouts!

Sunflower sprouts began to grow in our compost buckets! It was cute. We had thrown out some sprouted sunflower seeds that had gone bad and still, they wanted to be flowers! :)

Baby cilantro sprouts reaching to the sun...

Baby greens mix almost ready for harvest! (and we did, and it was fab.)

Baby spinach :)

Baby rainbow and swiss chard...

I re-mulched by the fence in the front yard, and put up this cute little sign...

Beautiful purple Irises grew by the fences in the front in spring...

Buddha brings peace to the garden. :) See the baby lilac tree beside him? That's Lucia, a cutting from the yard of my great great great grandparents home where I spent my childhood in Maine. My great-grandmother likely planted the lilacs. According to my mom, we have a lot in common as far as our relationship with nature goes and I am so grateful to have this living piece of that sweet property in Maine from a time that will always have a piece of my heart. Right now, it is planted in a pot, which we planted in the ground to protect the roots over the winter. The lilac tree has to over-winter or it will never bloom, so we have moved it around in a bucket and someday when we have a more permanent location we will plant it into the ground. She is doing really well, though and has at least quadrupled in size since she was given to us by the sweet present owner of the house.

Here's the greens garden in the beginning...

And I have no idea why this is horizontal, or how to change it for that matter, so here is a view of the farthest garden bed now, full of basil (in the front) tomatoes: heirloom and cluster (gross word), Strawberries, cilantro, and other herbs just now starting to sprout.

This is our Kale now, almost full grown. We grew it for both juicing, and kale chips mmmmm.

Here is our Rainbow Chard now, which we grew for juicing, and Chard wraps.



And here is a tomato peeking out of the greens...

Here is our cilantro, about to go to seed....ahhh we need to make a lot of salsa!

Some Romaine Lettuce on its way, along with new growth from where we cut the baby greens...




And in the front yard, the little purple bell flowers have returned and are in full bloom... :)



And that is an update (finally) of our little gardens. Do you have a garden? What has your experience with gardening been like? What is growing in yours?

Love,
Abbey