I am thankful for Uncle Billy's Garden.
I love gardens. Vegetable, flower, tree, shrub, formal, informal. I like them all. Yesterday, I had a pleasant time visiting one when Ward and I visited Uncle Billy's and Aunt Martha's garden. Aunt Martha invited us to pick some of their bumper strawberry crop, a very lucky thing for us. While Ward picked strawberries, I took a look at other things that are growing in their garden right now. Here are pictures of a few of them.
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| Uncle Billy has raised beds for many of the things he grows. This is a new location for the strawberries this year and apparently they like it. |
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| The broccoli is doing well and hasn't been besieged by worms yet. Aunt Martha will be freezing some today. The cauliflower (no pictures) is happy, too. |
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The potatoes are blooming. To the right of them, Uncle Billy has planted corn.
Notice the high deer fence in the background. It seems to be working. |
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| Besides strawberries, we also picked lettuce. Aunt Martha plants a variety pack of seeds each year that makes a very pretty bed. There are onions planted behind the lettuce. |
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| Along the back fence, they grow hops for their sons to use in beer brewing. |
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| The raspberries have just started to get a couple of small green berries. There are also blueberries and figs growing in other beds. |
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| The watermelon and cantaloupe have just sprouted. Uncle Billy has black plastic around them because those crops like heat. |
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| The tomato plants are looking big for this time of year. |
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| Red clover was Uncle Billy's cover crop. |
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| Ward and Uncle Billy hard at work. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I may have done more eating of strawberries than just picking them. :) |
So for Uncle Billy's garden that he and Aunt Martha shared with us,
I am thankful.
That is quite a big garden and looks like a very productive one, too! Thank you for sharing the pictures of the garden with us. Those strawberries look delicious! I'm sure they tasted delicious, too.
ReplyDeleteThe strawberries are quite good. We picked enough that we were going to make something from them, but we are eating them fast enough one by one that I don't think will happen.
DeleteWhat a lovely garden! Uncle Billy has made it decorative as well as functional. Fresh produce is such a treat after a long winter.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the things he does in his retirement. He is very methodical in tending to his garden and it shows. The funny thing is that he doesn't like everything he grows. He grows it for other people.
DeleteWonderful garden, bet he'll have quite a lot of produce soon.
ReplyDeleteSome day I'd like to have a garden like that. However, if truth be told, I'm not ready to put in the large amount of work that it takes to do it. We have enough trouble tending to what's already planted in our yard. We usually plant a few vegetables, but we haven't done a big garden for a while.
DeleteOur garden did absolutely nothing. I think that mulch really doesn’t need to be a part of the mixture above the cardboard for no dig gardening. The pieces are too big for seedlings. Oh well, I raked it a bit and took the seeds we were going to make seed balls out of. I tossed them all randomly. Maybe they’ll grow. This garden is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI have used cardboard before for weed control, but never planted on top of it. Did you put soil on top and then plant for your no dig garden? In bad weed areas, the cardboard helped, but there were still weeds to deal with.
DeleteYes, it was supposed to be a soil mixture with compost, manure, mulch and other things. We’ll see if the seeds I haphazardly tossed will do anything.
DeleteI am trying to make a "wildflower" patch and I just did some seed tossing. Some of them are starting to come up, but some aren't. We'll see after the summer's over, how it all turns out.
DeleteI love freshly grown produce! What a wonderful place your uncle & aunt have, too. I always admire those who garden. It's truly a labor of love. My late in-laws had a big garden for years and while I understand the necessity of ending that phase in their lives, it was hard to see it go. They grew the best tomatoes and green beans which they freely shared with us. My favorite was their grapes and apples - double yum! I can almost imagine that in heaven they are gardening once again. :)
ReplyDeleteMy father was a huge gardener, also. It was a labor of love for him. And there's nothing like a fresh tomato. Maybe my father has run into your in-laws in heaven and they're gardening together.
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