Hi all,

Thought I'd share what we did with our garden. We have a roughly 30'x30' patch in our backyard. We've had the house 3 years, and when we got it, we could see there used to be a garden there but it was very overgrown with grass and weeds. The couple that had done the gardening had both gotten old and died, so it had gone unattended the last few years.

So 2012-2014 we grew a variety of stuff in it, like tomatoes, lettuce, kale, corn, carrots, zucchini, squash, and onions. However we had a horrible time keeping up with the weeds. Part of that might also have been some duck manure I used that I think was full of seeds.

Anyway, for this year we decided to do raised beds. We did four 4'x10' and four 4'x12'. Filled them all with tripple mix (12 yards ouch!). On the base of each we put a bunch of cardboard/paper to block the weeds, then some leaves and small branches we had leftover from pruning our apple tree.

In between all the boxes, we put down weedblocker then a couple inches of mulch. This year we're growing: Kale, radishes, beets, beans, onions, romaine, cabbage, peppers, carrots, zucchini, strawberries, and some herbs.

We also have lots of Muscat grapes growing in our backyard, about 15 vines that go up trellises and over our patio table. We get about 30 bottles of wine out of these on a good year.

We had some extra space after putting in the boxes, so i planted 8 Riesling vines, and a relative who is a grape grower grafted another 10 of our muscat vines for us, so we added those too.

We also have some pumpkins planted in the corners from seeds I kept from making Halloween pumpkins last year, and I also planted a potato that had been growing eyes, and it's taken well too.

Outside this main garden, we have a strip of bushes with raspberries, blackberries, currents,and blueberries. We also have a couple fig trees, and two pear trees (that never give us more than 2-3 pears each).

We're very happy with how the main garden turned out. We'll see how everything goes this year. We're hoping to not have such a hard time with weeds, and get some good production. We're in the Niagara region in Southern Ontario. Our house backs onto a big park so the garden gets a lot of sunlight.

Some pics attached of the progress over the last couple years.

Some grapes we had grafted, with overgrown garden all around it:

Getting it planted last year:

Garden boxes made, fence up. Those grapes from the first photo on right:

All done:

New Grapes, all muscat in foreground. In back along fence you can see a few of the Riesling: