Wrap Up: Summer Garden

I've been harvesting the last of the summer veggies we planted in the two small square-foot garden plots we built this year. Overall, it was a semi-success (the corn totally flopped) but better than nothing, for sure. And I've learned a little about what to do better for next year. But this has all reminded me that I've been meaning to do a post on our garden (per my mother's request) since basically June. So, Mom, here it is. See how good I am at getting things crossed off my list!

The bottom line is, we own a house with a yard the size and work equivalent of having two more children....children who don't love you. So, after two years of hacking and cutting and weeding and raking (and raking and raking and raking) accompanied by my incessant complaining to anyone within earshot, (and a husband, who although is a good worker, doesn't get any utils out of yard work), I finally decided that it was time for the yard to start working for me. So, in the summer before this last one, Adam built me this massive composting system in order to make use of the three trillion leaves that come down every fall.

Voila, Compost!!

It's a built from old shipping pallets bought for $1.25 each from a local grocery store (but about $50 in hardware to put all the pieces together and the latch system to have the fronts able to open up for easy rotating. It's a triple-wide so that I can rotate more frequently in order to produce more compost and to get through the massive amounts of leaves and other brown and green waste that the yard generates. The 2x4 along the top allows us to rig up (tent-like) that large green tarp you see in the picture in order to keep the piles dry from our very prolific amounts of East Coast rain.
Here's harvesting some of the first of the spring compost for the new planting beds. Ain't it gorgeous!
I had enough compost in my first batch for two of these 4x4 sq' garden plots, and.....
....enough to dig this 12x2x2' trench for my new blueberry plants, and.....enough to mulch around several small shrubs around the yard, and to top off the barrel planter with my rosemary and some strawberries.

Here are the sq' boxes as the veggies were growing--complete with trellis system for the tomatoes, and a 2' fence to keep out the many, many critters that were very happy with my plantings).

One box had the tomatoes, peppers, carrots, eggplants and herbs (the two pictured above).
The other box had the corn, green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. Turns out that the corn was a complete flop, and some nasty bug completely devoured my entire cucumber vine after only giving me 2 cucs. Darn!

But we've been harvesting the tomatoes, basil, parsley and some lettuce into this month.