Originally Posted by
rryder
DH and I have had veggie and flower gardens for as long as we’ve been together (37 years). We use raised beds for our veggies, strawberries, and blueberries as well as some of the herbs. Right now we have 6 raised beds that measure 3 feet square, 2 that are 3’x6’ and one that is 3’ x 1 and 1/2 feet, as well as large pots made from various buckets and plastic tubs. We plant collards, various kinds of kale, chard and beets for greens. Lots of tomatoes, slicing, sauce and cherry tomatoes, pole beans and bush beans, cucumbers, okra, squash, various kinds of chili peppers and bell peppers. We also have blueberry bushes and ever bearing strawberries. All those are in the raised beds and or pots. I usually transplant the collards into shade at this time of year As they’re not as tasty when it gets hot, but haven’t gotten around to that yet. Because we pick the collards from the bottom up, we manage to keep them going for several years per plant (they don’t mind our winters and produce new growth pretty much all year round). No melons this year, rabbits or squirrels have gotten every single one for the last couple of years. Forgot to put in Lima beans this year!
Also have a teeny tiny water garden (roughly 3’ x 5’) that’s filled with water lily, pickerel weed, water iris, water mint, thalia, water hyacinth some underwater oxygenators and about a gazillion tadpoles thanks to the Cope’s Gray Tree Frogs that live in our elm tree.
and some roses, crape myrtle, gardenia, forsythia, very old holly bushes, winter honeysuckle, japanese honeysuckle (invasive, but it keeps our side yard from eroding into the street), wild clematis/ milkweed vine that we let grow because it has tiny little almost invisible flowers that can perfume the entire yard when it blooms!, and maple, choke cherry, elm, cedar and magnolia trees. Hostas, ferns, bearded iris, hellebores, etc.
much as we love all the ornamentals, I find that the older we get, the more we concentrate on maintaining the raised beds and teeny tiny water garden since they all much more easily managed than the rest of it.
We periodically hire folks to help us out with the rest of it when things start getting too over run with weeds, vines, etc.
Rob