More than1,000 people visit my Internet
Gardening page each month during the summer. Some ask about my personal garden. In
response, I'll post here a few photos of my 2007 garden. Each year the garden is
different. Past years are at the following pages:
Aerobic Garden 2006
Aerobic Garden 2005
Aerobic Garden 2004 (read here to learn why my garden is
"aerobic")
Aerobic Garden 2002-2003.
| In past years my apprentice gardeners had shown up for work only when the Silver Queen corn was ready for harvest in August. (See my aerobic garden pages for the past few years). This year they were old enough to learn what it takes to produce such a harvest. Of course, early April is pretty chilly in Blacksburg. I don't plant corn until mid-May or later. So the first lesson was how to plant onions. The sets are big enough for small hands to hold, and they won't get lost in the soil. | |
| These onions are already sprouting, granddaddy |
A couple of days later we did some light duty tilling so we could set out the broccoli and cauliflower plants.
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| Ready to plant, granddaddy. | The broccoli's planted, granddaddy! | Start the engine, granddaddy. |
The hard work did not curb their enthusiasm. I wished they could have stayed longer for the heavy work of planting potatoes and setting up the tomato cages, but those jobs are 6 to 8 weeks in the future and they have other work to do at home this spring.
We picked 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 pounds of asparagus every day last week, along with some spinach that had wintered over from last August. Asparagus isn't very exciting to look at during harvest season, so no pictures today. There will be a lot more asparagus during the next couple of weeks. In the next few days I'll finish tilling and plant the potatoes.
Most of our vegetables are thriving despite an unusually hot, dry June and early July. We had only about 1.2 inches of rain in June and about 0.6 inches so far in July. Normal rainfall for these months is closer to 4 inches. Watering usually is not necessary. This year I've been watering every few days, and I'm sure to hear about the high cost of water when the bill arrives. Of course money is no object when I remember that my student gardeners are expecting some good corn picking in early August. As you can see below, and even more clearly in the large image available when you click on this smaller image, the corn is growing on schedule. (Be sure that automatic image resizing is turned off in your browser so you will see the full width of the 2500 pixel image.) .
From the eastern end of the garden we are looking toward the southwest. The front of the garden is toward the right, facing almost due north. Just to the right of the corn is a double row of beets, perhaps the best crop I've had in years. Further to the right is a row of Swiss chard. The 6 tomato cages in the middle of the garden include 4 Better Boy and 2 cherry tomato plants. To the right of the tomatoes are 8 pepper plants that are growing very slowly, and further right are 7 Black Beauty eggplants. Through the gap between the corn and tomaotes you can just see the butternut and acorn squash hills. Beyond the peppers is a single row of potatoes. Three entire rows of potatoes failed to come up for reasons I can't guess. I've seeded three hills of cucumbers into the empty space, and the cukes are doing well so far. Any additional empty space is ready for the fall broccoli and cauliflower that I'll plant in the 2nd or 3rd week of August. The bushy border in the distance is the asparagus bed, but that's not the end of the garden. Beyond that I'm growing pole beans (you can see the top of the pole bean teepee peeking over the asparagus) and summer squash. To the right of the eggplant in the larger image you can see what is left of my lettuce patch. Unfortunately, we have something of a rabbit infestation this year. I'm told that the late hard freeze in early May and the very dry weather since then have driven the wildlife into our gardens. That also explains why in June my black raspberry crop was wiped out by the birds for only the second time in 27 years. Thus gardening teaches us about balance and change. Each year some things thrive and some things fail, and each year the balance is different depending on the changing weather. We adapt and enjoy the variety in life.
As they do every August, my student gardeners came to town for a few days to help with the corn harvest. Even at only 6 months old, my youngest apprentice has a sharp eye for a good ear. |
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And her older sister finds one to her liking. |
This one's ready, granddaddy. |
I like this one, granddaddy. |
Undeterred by the 97 degree heat and extreme humidity, my oldest student learned to use pruning shears to cut some flowers. Do you ever wonder why the heavily-watered acorn squash wilts in the heat while the unwatered wildflowers thrive despite almost no rain in the past several weeks? This also happened to be the day I chose to dethatch my half acre of lawn. The weather was all wrong for such heavy labor, but my son-in-law was here to help get the job done. |
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Grandmommy will love this Queen Anne's Lace. |
At about 5:30 AM we finally had 0.2 inch of rain during a very brief thundershower. We had about 0.2 inch a couple of weeks ago, about 1.5 inches on July 24-25, and no other rain since sometime in June. Our lawn is totally brown, which is good in some ways because I've had to cut it only once since July 4. Fortunately the vegetable garden soldiers on thanks to my ability to still drag 150 feet of hose up the hill for watering every couple of days. Most years in Blacksburg, watering is almost completely unnecessary.
The arrival of autumn did not grant us respite from the heat and humidity, but it did bring a resurgence in the growth of eggplant and peppers thanks to some showers and lower temperatures in the mid-80's. I stopped taking photos of the garden because it is not very pretty to look at after the drought. The vegetables still taste good, however.
We picked our first broccoli of the fall, exactly two months after setting out the plants. Thanks to regular watering (something not usually required on my hilltop garden) we should have a very good crop of broccoli.
Finally, after months of almost no rain at all we had 3" of rain overnight. That's about equal to our normal total for an entire month. Just three days ago I picked the last of the red raspberries. The drought assured that we did not get enough berries to make our usual freezer jam.
Three consecutive nights of temperatures in the low 20's marked the end of most gardening for this year.
I took advantage of the 65 degree temperature on this partly cloudy afternoon to do my final garden cleanup and tilling for this year. The Swiss chard is still producing good greens. During preliminary cleanup on November 10, I actually found two lettuce plants that still had some edible leaves on them. I planted that lettuce way back in May. It was assaulted by rabbits this year so it never grew more than an inch tall through the summer drought. Then in September when it cooled down some and we had some showers, the lettuce finaly had a chance to grow. It was the best fall lettuce I've had in years. How these two plants survived the hard freezes in late October I do not know.
The weather took a sudden turn to autumn and today we have strong winds, drizzly rain, and leaves flying everywhere. Obviously I tilled my garden yesterday just in the nick of time. The garden is at rest.
Page created 5/1/2007
Updated 11/15/2007
Harry_M_Kriz, [hmkriz@vt.edu]
University Libraries
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0434