It's beautiful! How big is your garden?

Too big! I paced it off earlier today and it is roughly 60'x90' - about 1/2 of it in sweet corn.

I used to grow red raspberries in the center against the one fence - they have died out and I do enjoy them and would like to put a few plants back in. There is rhubarb out there and some concord grapes.

It's great!! It's also bigger than my entire property--LOL. Wow! Very funny that the corn is named 'Coon's Choice.'

For me, flowers are my primary passion and a few veggies are a sideline. Herbs edge out the veggies, too. We had our first tomatoes this week, too. My 6-year-old son was delighted!

We are growing three whole stalks of corn because he was indignant that I wasn't growing his favorite vegetable in my little potager. So, I placated him with three stalks in a 15 gallon galvanized tub. Guess I should think about hand pollinating to make sure I get a couple of ears of corn for him.

Thanks for sharing the pictures. It's amazing to see what everyone else is doing.

Lisa

I grow vegetables and flowers. I wouldn't dare take a picture of this years garden though as it has all gone to weeds with so much rain over the last few weeks. Today I mowed the paths and started weeding with my new hula hoe. I got two sections done and will rake that tomorrow and hoe some more. It rained so much in fact that I didn't get beans, cucs, pumpkins, squash or watermelon planted. Very disappointing. I do have tomatoes, none ripe yet, cauliflower that isn't making heads yet, broccoli that went to seed while I was out of town. Bell peppers, brussel sprouts, early and late cabbage and peas that are doing well.

I also love flower gardening and would give up veggies before flowers if I had to make a choice. This year my radishes and lettuce went to seed without producing much and I am thinking that I'll plant seeds for those in my flower beds next year as fillers. They are lovely when they bloom! I don't grow herbs as a general rule.

MeMo

Your garden is really beautiful!

DL

I love your veggie garden. It looks wonderful! I used to grow veggies until I had an explosion of groundhogs. I finally gave it up..My DH said it was like planting a buffet for them. I am still laughing at the name of your corn "Coon's Choice"!!! I just bet it is their choice. Hope the new electric fence works!

cindy, your garden is simply magnificent, outstanding!
Our garden is about 5000 sq ft. I know from experience how much work and time you have invested there. Great job!

Mom's helper - I did look at the photos of your garden and went to the web page where you have a lot of great pics and thought how similar your garden was to ours in many ways. That big open expansive setting is so similar. Where do you garden? I am in central Illinois about 70 miles NE of St. Louis.

That front section of the garden toward the camera in my shots - about 60x30 is the main planting area. It is the most convenient to water and the house and it has held the core crops for 15 years. The middle 60x30 section has one area to the far left that is actually not planted at all - a pair of cow panel fences that hold concord grapes and then a section where I used to have red raspberries that need to replanted. The right third of that section and the entire 60x30 back part is all in corn - the soil wasn't improved as well there especially in the back and the canopy of corn covers a lot of weeds between the rows - that part is my husband's domain and I keep begging to eliminate that whole back section and make it smaller but he LOVES HIS CORN! He pulls the Mantis tiller between the rows a few times and just lets it go after that. When I did it myself years ago I worked it harder but it is just too big to be easily manageable.

We suffer from a bad need to better rotate the crops and better improve the back area (although the corn looks fabulous this year). We are going to work in our compost which we are amending with manure this summer and next year I need to rotate the crops - for now we rather move them side to side in that one bed and it's not enough. We really are frought with the tendency toward early blight on the tomatoes as a result.

I really like the same weed-free rows that you have beautifully done in your garden - and it is indeed a lot of work. We purchased some heavy landscape 'carpet' fabric a long time ago and stripped it up - I use it as paths which I just lay out as we plant in whatever pattern makes sense for the year and then we cover the entire area with straw. By now the strips have weeds that can get up thru it and next year I really need to replace them (but they have worked great for a long time - it's the kindof stuff a company would use to help prevent erosion on slopes in big plantings). There is something so satisfying about a really happy vegetable garden, though. You do so many things in yours - I have a TON of flowers so an awful lot of my energy goes to my first flower love first. I'll post a link below to my flowers that I've been talking about with the Cottage Gardeners.

I worked out of town for 7 years commmuting back and forth and our gardens that we've worked for 20 years had really gotten into disarray. I am back now since August 2009 and this year has been garden reclamation season. My DH just kindof kept things alive while I was gone - he's a good helper along with my father-in-law, but they need guideance... ;)

Here is a link that might be useful: Cindy's Flowers

Cindy

I thought the same when I seen your garden, big open expansive setting.
We are in the northeast Z6, you know,where the sun always shines hot
and it never rains..at least that's what it seems like this year. We rotate
our crops for as much as it helps. I started pulling a few blighted leaves off the very bottom of the tomatoes last weekend. Disgusting. I'm hoping the heat will at least kill the spores. I love my corn too. Last year I raised nine 50' rows and sold a lot of it. This year I raised only four rows. I raise Honey and Pearl that I buy from Twilley Seed. HnP is the best corn I have ever tasted by far. This year I spaced the rows, tomatoes 6' apart , for easy tilling as are the other rows. It's great and one of the best things I did this year. The one disappointment is the peppers. Out of the whole row (pic below, 35 plants) we have about 6 peppers. The neighbor next to us has six plants with only four peppers. We never had this happen before. We have no bees this year which help although peppers are self pollinating. It could have been the first heat wave and lack of rain and not enough watering. The small pepper stems dropped off. We gave away two plants to a friend twenty miles away where they were getting rain showers when we weren't several weeks ago. They have peppers on their plants. Our plants were not fertilized any more than we did years before. The plants themselves are very healthy but still have no blossoms on them.

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The lack of rain here is just simply torture. Several weeks ago we went without rain for three weeks, now we are on a two week stretch with 100* heat. Unreal. The water pump is getting a strenuous unneeded workout and so are we. Last year it was way too much rain, this year the lack of it.

It appears your garden reclamation was a huge success! I took a look at your flower pics. Simply magnificent Cindy!

Congrats and GLTY!

Here is a link that might be useful: Mom's Garden Pics, New Pics 7/03/2010