In my neck of the woods, the garden season is really only just beginning. We are typically frost-free from June 1st- September 12th or so. This year, we had a frost on June 8th. And although this gives us a very short window in which to get the bulk of our garden planted, grown, and harvested… it IS possible. We’ve learned to live and work with it. And somehow, we manage to grow the majority of what we need for our family for an entire year. Purely organically. Pretty awesome stuff.

This year, we expanded our permaculture garden yet again. We’re developing a food forest in a couple of different areas and have really focused on perennial berries and fruits such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, strawberries, plum trees, grapes, elderberry, mulberry, buffalo berry, and rhubarb. More asparagus was planted. Perennial flowers such as peonies, poppies, coneflower, lilac, forsythia, mallow, hollyhocks, climbing roses, clematis, columbine, creeping sedum, phlox, lily of the valley, and lilies were planted for the hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. We even started growing hops…for obvious reasons. Essentially, this year really was devoted to preparing a base on which a future thriving forest garden can grow. We’re also learning to incorporate these elements with our existing annual vegetables.

As those of you who follow my blog know, my garden consists of primarily hugelkultur raised garden beds. These beds have been key in enabling us to grow as much as we do in such a short time. They heat up much faster than the ground, we don’t do any tilling whatsoever, very little watering is required, they can be intensively planted which allows us to grow much more in less space than a conventional garden, and they just get better every year. Last year, we had 10 beds that are approximately 7 feet wide x 13 feet long. This year we added 3 more of those beds. In addition, we built a long curved hugel bed (for many of the newly planted berries, asparagus, and rhubarb), a massive round hugel bed, reconstructed and moved a keyhole/hugel bed, and added in another raised bed.

As far as the vegetables go, we really focused on what we use the most of: tomatoes, potatoes, beans, peas, corn, cucumbers, onions, and garlic. Four of the beds are dedicated to potatoes. We planted 30 pounds of seed potatoes combined in those beds. The varieties planted this year are all organic seed stock from Peaceful Valley and include Chieftain Red, All Blue, and Viking Purple.

The potatoes were planted early May and have been buried once already. When we got that frost on June 8th, after burying them I covered the tops with straw and only a few suffered minor frost damage. One tip for great potatoes is to prepare your bed or planting area with bone meal prior to planting (I did this as soon as the soil could be worked). Bone meal provides phosphorous and calcium to your potato plants.

Garlic, onions, and broccoli all grown together. What you can’t see from the photo are the carrots and radishes that are planted on the sides of the beds. All great companions for a polyculture bed.

Another good example of a polyculture is this bed, which has strawberries, onions, lettuces, carrots, radishes, and turnips. All in the early stages of growth, but you get the idea. This bed is very “unorganized” by way of appearance. There are no straight lines, no real groupings of one type of plant. Predatory insects find it much easier to go on munching one plant after the other when they are in a straight monoculture line. By inter-cropping companions, you can confuse and deter insects. Not to mention you can utilize a greater area of your bed by planting this way.

I’m excited to share with you in a future post how this keyhole bed came together. It is a horseshoe-shaped bed with the “keyhole” or access point being the large rock. Around the outside I have tomato plants with dill, calendula, nasturtium, and marigolds. Around the inside of the bed (just outside of the compost ring in the middle) I planted cucumbers. The upper left of the photo is a raised bed that was put in this year for the majority of my tomato plants. So far, I have 30 plants in with a few more that need a home yet.

The peas are doing very well. I went with my favorite variety from last year, which is a shelling pea called “Canoe”. They are a bush pea, but as I learned last year, they most definitely need trellising- they reached 4 feet in height last year! So I got smart and have been putting up strings for them.

Much of the corn and most of the cucumbers had to be replanted after the frost as they’d just started to grow (those pictured here are the survivors). I really enjoyed planting these two together last year and am doing it again this year. The corn gets planted in rows down the middle while a single row of cucumbers get planted on each side.

Though in the very early stages of the growing season, we’re off to a pretty good start. Despite the frost and needing to replant over 150 bush beans, 24 cucumbers, and nearly 100 corn plants…we pulled through with frost blankets and straw. It’s been a very wet month, which means lots of slugs. But we haven’t had to water in over a month either, even with delicate seedlings.

I hope to post an update on the garden every couple of weeks as we progress through the season. If not for the encouragement of others, at least for my own record. It sure is fun to look back and see how things grow. To take note of hardships and successes. To learn how to do it better. To work better with nature.

See you again soon.