A Look Back

To start off the “looking back” series, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the farmhouse vegetable garden - where it started, how I planned it, how we pivoted, how we built it, and where it stands now. July is mid-season in the garden, so it’s a good time to get some current shots.

In future issues I plan to look back at my previous two gardens, as well as talk about flower gardens, evolution of home spaces (including our never-before-seen first house in Portland), check in on former DIY projects, and more.

We moved onto our property in January of 2018 after living with my mom for “a few months” that stretched into 17 months, so you can imagine I was ready to grow some food! I knew where the garden would go (really the only space), so that first winter I dreamed and planned, creating the sketch you can see above that would eventually turn into the garden on the right.

(Also during that first few months we had to move the shed from an odd placement near the trees over to the future garden area. Too bad we didn’t get that almost-disaster on video! Brian used large pipes to “roll” the shed across the grass and driveway, not really taking into account the slope of the space…and it definitely tried to get away from us numerous times! Thankfully, it made it in one piece, now in a perfect spot.)

We had a LOT on our plates the first year - living in the manufactured home while finding professionals to help us bring our dreams for the farmhouse to life. And the county and their many permits. So we built three raised beds that first spring using the plan and planted them with lettuce, kale, onions, tomatoes, and more.

But let me back up a bit and explain about WHERE the garden was located and why. You can see the location I chose in one of the very first photos we took of the farmhouse after moving in on the left. This area next to the stand-alone garage had a number of things going for it:

But this area had one major flaw:

But with little choice, I went with it. (Spoiler: Yes, I get vegetables, but not nearly what I used to get in an all-day sunny garden - veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans want as much sun as possible.)

One year into our garden adventure we had to stop and regroup. Those first three beds taught us one thing: We lived on a property where a LOT of deer visit each and every night - and they eat EVERYTHING. I hardly got a tomato (I thought the leaves were poisonous to them?), and all leafy things were eaten - I only harvested what was growing under the hastily thrown up chicken wire.

We now needed a deer fence if we were going to grow anything. So the second spring on our property the garden build started with a fence all around the area, connecting to the garage and shed. The main fence was finished in March and I worked on the area outside the gate in September, finishing it in spring of 2020 when Brian completed the grape arbor.

During the spring of 2019 after installing the fence Brian built the raised beds according to my plan and I built the rock and cement wall beds, laid cardboard and spread wood chips. I hoped to have almost all the beds done and planted to finally have a full garden again.

The Raised Beds: There was a gigantic deck made from trex-like boards at the manufactured home on the property. We took half of it to harvest the boards for our raised beds so that they would last longer than wood. Here’s how we built them to last.

The Broken Concrete Bed: In the lower right photo you can see the long bed made with broken concrete that’s been partially filled with dirt. This bed runs along the fence and is the most shaded, so I planned to grow cut flowers and hydrangeas in this bed. We had a ton of concrete left from breaking up old patios around the farmhouse and I used what we had. I simply found flat pieces I could carry and piled them on in an alternating pattern.

You may have noticed a round bed in my plans and the first photos. Above you can see it being built out of the abundant rock that is everywhere on our property. I had never built a rock wall or bed before, but I just started piling them on, adjusting them so they didn’t rock, tilt, or move, and filled with yard debris, soil, and compost. And it worked - it’s still standing doing it’s job!

Was this the best use of that space? Probably not, but I do love it and the dimension it adds to the garden space. I think it’s prettier than the broken concrete and we didn’t have enough trex boards to make more beds, so rocks it needed to be.

By mid-July of 2019, all the main beds had vegetables growing AND we had installed our simple pvc-pipe-to-soakers watering system!! It was a good feeling to be growing food again (and watering on a timer, no less!).

Why wood chip paths?? I had gravel paths in our last vegetable garden and while I loved the look, they were expensive, heavy to lay, and most importantly, hard to maintain. I was always afraid of spilling soil or compost because I knew that would be a breeding ground for weeds. Then we got moles. Huge dirt mounds in the middle of the gravel paths, on the sides of the beds and paths - what a mess. And there’s no layering - you can add more gravel, but now you have a dirt base in areas that will grow weeds.

Lesson learned: I went with cardboard and wood chips (lasts longer than straw or grass clippings) and I LOVE it. I don’t have to worry about dirt or debris on the paths and I can just layer more on when the weeds start getting out of control (as you can see below that I need to do again, asap).

I bought and installed some metal beds in late winter and planted them with strawberries and zinninas. I couldn’t afford the Birdie’s beds or watering troughs I would’ve preferred (this was before they were offered at Epic Gardening) so I “cheaped” out (in quotes because they weren’t that cheap). And I really don’t like them, so have never linked to them. The metal is flimsy and is even rusting as I write this, but mainly it’s the design of the corners that allows dirt to escape and weeds to take hold. Sigh.

On the left you can see where I’ve started laying out the broken concrete patio (I wrote more about how I built it here on the blog). It was hard work that took awhile but I loved how it turned out (more on this below). The cardboard is all in preparation for wood chips.

By the summer of 2020 all the beds were planted, all the paths were mulched and we enjoyed sitting out on our patio taking in the views and the vegetables.

The garden patio provided a place for us to hang out when we had no other outside area to lounge. It was fairly protected from our sometimes coastal-like winds, it was picturesque, and a fun place to relax.

As time went on, though, we used it less. We added a fire pit area next to the farmhouse and then started a side porch where the furniture would eventually live. After five years I wanted more space to grow food and decided to remove the patio and replace it with a long bed edged with rocks. I’ve been growing potatoes, squash, and corn in this bed (which it’s really too shady for, but a girl’s gonna try…)

A couple of years into the garden I pulled back the row cover over the kale and onion bed (used to keep in warmth and limit bugs some) to find every.single.leaf. of kale gone. Cleaned off down to the stems (even squirrels don’t like kale stems, it seems). I was SHOCKED. Under the cover I could still see green, so it wasn’t until I pulled it back that I found this. What?? I literally had NO idea - and no experience. I was used to “squirrels” being the kind that climbed trees, ate nuts, and sometimes would dig in your pots.

Now I learned first hand that ground squirrels (they do not run into trees, but into dens in the ground, into rocky areas, under foundations) eat your food. Eat so much of your food. Ugh. I don’t even want to think about all they’ve eaten of mine (I’m ignoring for now ALL the ripe plums they stole before I could get to them last year…).

So the pivot is that all the beds that can be covered are now permanently covered all season, first with row cover and then with insect netting. My garden isn’t as pretty, but at least we’re able to harvest things.

The garden entry area holds a few more beds to fill the space. I’ve found I can plant garlic (it’s just been harvested from the empty bed in the lower right) and asparagus without the deer bothering them too much. I thought I could plant rhubarb (again, poisonous leaves, hello?), but the deer decimated the leaves so you can see it covered with chicken wire on the left and it’s finally growing well (deer also damage plants by pulling it to see if they want it, disturbing the roots even if they decide they don’t like it).

The grape is a green seedless table grape that takes up a lot of room but doesn’t really produce much. Not enough sun and too many deer and bird nibbles.

I need to refresh the wood chips (and just got a Chip Drop delivery - a huge pile of chips for $20!), but I do love visiting the garden every day to check on things, harvest a handful of something, and water new plantings.

No, things don’t grow as well here - I’ll never have the tomato output I got in our last garden and the struggle with cucumbers is real - but it’s enough for us and it really is the best, easiest place for a vegetable garden on this property.

A testimony to the shade issue is berries: I’ve tried growing raspberries and thorneless blackberries for years in the two beds closest to the trees and have harvested literal handfuls. A couple years ago I set up some raised beds behind the farmhouse with southern exposure and they have taken off, giving many quarts of berries through the summer.

So the lesson really is “full sun” means sun all day long, not just the minimum 6 hours, for fruiting plants to really produce (leafy plants do well for me, though, as do roots).

I hope to be gardening in this space for many more years, taking what it will give, pivoting more if we need to, and generally enjoying the experience as well as the harvests. And that’s kind of what it’s about, right?