Moving the Georgia Home Garden - Part 2

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In part 1, I posted about the prep work involved at my new house before I could move my garden.  In this post I detail the finished project.  Garden fever is starting to kick in.

Here is a pic of the old garden at Georgia Home Garden 1.0, I always get nostalgic whenever I visit the old homestead and this was no exception.  The garden looked pretty rough.  The plan was to pry up the frames on each of the beds and haul them to the new house.


Here is a close up after removing one frame, it only took five minutes to pry them up.


After I removed the frames, I decided to rake the soil to loosen the straight edges.  This area can still be used to garden and I am leaving the soil.  I considered hauling the soil to my new house since it is so rich, but I decided that is too much work.  I will start fresh at the new house.


Yes I am from Georgia, and yes I have some red neck in me.  I didn't have anything to tie down the bed frames so I just piled all six in my truck and drove really really slow.  I took back roads and nothing fell out. 


Here is the new spot for the three 4x8 beds.  The plan is to put them right outside the shaded area.


Here they are, all done and ready for some fresh dirt.  There was an unbelievable amount of work in prepping this area to get to this point, but I am looking forward to spending many hours here.


Another angle, they are placed right below the slope where the ground is a little more level.

Moving the Georgia Home Garden - Part 1

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I have started the process of moving my raised beds from Georgia Home Garden 1.0 to the new house.  The old house hasn't sold and I was going to leave the beds there, but those jokers are coming with me now that the house hasn't sold.  I am working on the first garden area at the new house, a North Facing side yard.  This side yard is dead space and had drainage issues when we bought the house, but I think I can get some use out of it. 

So here it is before I started and a complete mess, full of weeds and mushy ground.


You can see the stains on the bottom of the brick, there were no gutters on this side of the house. I had them installed shortly after we moved in.


Part of the problem with the drainage was the ground was sloped toward the house and was full of pits and high spots.


Here is the view from my neighbors yard looking down at my house, you can see how the ground slopes.


I pulled the weeds, brought in 5 yards of fill dirt that was shoveled by hand and wheel barrow. (I am getting a real strong upper back, this brings my tally to 11 yards of material hand shoveled so far.)


View from neighbors house


I started on the house side and graded it away from the house to a low spot.  I then went from the hill side and kept the natural slope but just filled it in to make a nice smooth surface.


I set a string line that was an equal distance from the house and made everything grade toward the string line and then toward my front yard.  The goal was to create a slight gulley for the water to naturally flow toward.  We got a few good rains after this pic was taken and it worked well. The ground is pretty mushy now, but that is only because the dirt is fresh and needs to settle.


I laid pine straw to keep the weeds at bay and left an area open to place the raised beds.


Another angle from neighbors (I get weird looks from them, wondering what I am up to haha.)


Ok, now the most important part.  Placement of the beds was going to be crucial in this North facing garden.  The house shades this area, but the amount of shade depends on the time of day and more importantly the time of year.  I did a lot of reading on that and decided to take a picture of the area at noon on December 21st, which is the Winter solstice.  That is the time of the year when the sun is the lowest in the sky and the shade would be the worst.  If I placed my beds outside this shade range on that day, then they should receive plenty of sunlight because the shade would only get better after that date.  That is it for part 1, everything is ready to go now.

Garden Update and Harvests - August 2, 2012

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I just returned from our annual beach vacation to Florida.  There is nothing like being gone for a week from your garden and being so excited to see what has changed since you left.

As expected I had a ton of tomatoes that ripened on the vine.  I harvested 13 pounds of ripe tomatoes to bring my grand total over 100 pounds for the year!  I am super excited about my tomato harvest this year.  The next thing that changed drastically was my purple hull and zipper cream field peas.  The zipper creams have exploded with pods and I can't wait to start harvesting.

Now for the bad news, something decimated my zucchini plants.  I don't know what it was but it completely ate the plants down to nothing.  I don't know if they will bounce back in time, and I may try one more planting for fall harvest.  I heard from my neighbor that we got lots of rain while I was gone, so all in all not a bad week.

Purple Hulls on the left

Zipper creams on the right loaded with pods

Close up of pea flowers before they form into pods.

The zipper creams are sprawling everywhere.

The silver queen corn shot up while I was gone.  

I have neglected this batch so I hope I get a few ears.

Hungarian Wax Pepper plants loaded with peppers.

Jalapeno peppers, Bell peppers, and Hungarian Wax peppers

Huge batch of tomatoes, over 13 pounds.

Garden Harvests - May 24, 2012

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I am still harvesting a few squash every couple of days and rather than post the same old thing I thought it would be better to post what future harvests are expected since all I am harvesting now is squash.  I have corn, tomatoes, and peppers all in different stages.  In the next month I should harvest some of each if everything goes as planned.

I also have a dilemma on my peppers.  I planted what I thought were habaneros but look nothing like the traditional orange habaneros.  These are long and slender and don't resemble a habanero. Maybe it is a different kind of habanero, if anyone could identify it I would appreciate knowing.  I am not a pepper guru.

This is one of my favorite pictures I have taken this year.  My daughter wanted to walk through the corn plot.  She is holding her popsicle up high and the sunlight was shining right toward my camera.  It turned out like she was holding her hands up to pray and God was shining his light on my little girl.  I thought it looked even better black and white.

 

Here she is standing in front of the corn.
Two more weeks till this is harvested.

Here is the second batch I planted, it's waist high right now.

This stalk had three silks coming off of one ear.  I doubt they will all fully mature but it looked cool.  I have several with two ears per stalk.

My largest tomato cluster

Roma tomatoes

Another smaller cluster

This is the pepper that doesn't look like a habanero, what is it?

Garden Update - May 16, 2012

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Few words, just lots of pictures this week.

Overhead picture of garden, 

standing on my picnic table.

Side shot, grass is getting green.

Front shot of garden.

I put down a fresh layer of pine straw this week.

Corn plot, batches planted about a month apart.

Silks are forming...

And tassels are getting ready to pollinate.

My mini tomato alley, cages are tied to fence post.

Granny has the original tomato alley

Lettuce and spinach bed

I just harvested lettuce when this pic was taken.

Squash bed

Four more tomatoes

Another yellow squash bed.

Eggplants on the left, bell peppers on the right.

Last but not least, I planted my butter beans.

Garden Update - April 22, 2012

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I realized this week it has been over a month since I have done a post on the overall progress of the garden.  I won't type much except to say that everything is doing pretty good and I am trying to stay on top of things.  I took pictures of everything today and it is amazing what a month can do.

Bed #1 - Alaska Peas are a snarled mess, and

I am going to pull these up and harvest what is left.

The peas are also covered in some sort of bug, pea aphids maybe.

Bed #2 - Black Beauty Eggplant and California Bell Peppers

Bed #3 - More Alaska peas and also a mess

Bed # 4 - Four tomato plants, romas and better boys.

Bed #5 - Two Best Boy tomato plants and two Dixie Hybrid yellow squash.

Close up of squash starting to set fruit.

Bed #6 - Lettuce and Spinach Bed

Here are 3 more tomato plants I potted up 

because I didn't have the heart to trash them.

Coca Cola planter - Habanero and Jalapeno peppers

Peaches and Cream corn from my garden expansion area

Five more rows of Peaches and Cream corn, 

you can barely see them but they are just coming up among the weeds.