It's great to see you over here! Welcome to the forum.

Your garden looks very nice. I always liked the looks of the shorter raised beds. I have yet to get any warm weather crops out, and I'm still finishing some cool weather crops (carrots and beets and radishes).

We have raised beds as well. I'll share a picture later if I get the chance.

Please do share. I like to get inspiration from others!

Lettuce after the melons shown below-

Alright. Here are some photos I found of last year's garden in the raised beds. This year I have much more in ground garden so these are only a small fraction of the garden, but a much loved section.

Watermelon and cantaloupe on the front there climbing a trellis, beans to the left, sweet corn behind. The low tunnel where I started all my seedlings like tomatoes this past spring in the raised beds.

Enjoyed the tour, htwo! And looking good, Jacob.

I am busy, busy, busy! And being an old chick, I wear out fast. I will try to get some pics on this afternoon when I come in to have lunch and a rest.

--Back later--

I apologize that my garden is not as neat and well organized as everybody else. I've let the weeds get away with me. I have excuses but wah, wah-wah, wah-wah. (heh.)

First off, this is part of the herb garden. There's a fingerprint on my lens, again, sorry, I'll clean it off before next post. The only work I have done on it has been to spread some woodchips where I know I'm not going to put any seeds. My woodchips are not thoroughly aged so I do not want to accidentally get them buried into the soil. They are ok as mulch at this point but the suck up all the nitrogen if they get buried too soon.

This is the west end of the garden, looking north. I'm standing at my back door to take this. The western-most bed is where I like to grow my tomatoes, but *sigh* I have to rotate and I'm just barely coping with that. In those coffee tubs (bottoms are cut out) are some zucchini and some spaghetti squash I grew inside from seed. We have had hellish wind so the tubs are more to protect from the wind than anything. But they serve other purposes as well. They are sunk into the ground about half an inch to prevent water runoff, as it's dry here, too. And sometimes, when the plant is small enough to allow it, if we get cold nights or pelting rain before they are old enough to tolerate it, I will just pop the black plastic lid that comes with the tub on top for the night and remove it in the morning before the sun starts bearing down on it. This is the next bed over, on the east of the bed earlier shown. In the front of the bed is a row of walking onions. They do a good job of holding back the grass from that end. Now's the best time to harvest walking onions. Some of them are just beginning to put on a little pod that will become bulblets. After they make bulblets the bulb part that's in the ground will taste hotter and the green parts will go hollow and get tough. Behind them are some volunteer lettuces and there are a few cabbages. That's a volunteer purple peach tree in the bed. It bloomed this year but then we had several late freezes. It makes very small peaches but they are freestone and they peel easily. They make really good jam. The tree to the back is a mulberry. That tree is my treat for the birds. Further out in the bed is a zig-zag make-shift trellis for green beans, and the seeds were planted yesterday and today. To the right of those under those ceiling-fan lightbulb shades, I have planted okra seed. This year it's Beck's Big Buckhorn.This is the view of it from the other end.

This is the same bed, just a little further east, and past where the okra are planted. Hubs rigged up a trellis for cucumbers with some stockwire scraps he had. WI5207 aka Crunchy Muncher, my fave cucumber, are planted there. It is hard to grow seed for this cuke, as it makes cukes whether the flower gets polinated or not, it's just that it doesn't make viable seed if not polinated. You don't know if they've made seed or not, till you cut the cucumber open. These make wonderful pickles at any stage and they are never bitter, even if you leave them on the vine till the skin turns white and yellow. I hope to get good seed this year as I haven't had any in the last two years.

This year I hope to put down cardboard wherever I can make it work. The best place to get cardboard is at a furniture store that sells La-Z-Boy recliners. Plus they throw away some stuff that makes great frost blankets. It's huge sheets of bubble-wrap that is fuzzy on the back. Here is the cardboard Hubs went to town to get today:

All the amendments we have added to the soil over the last 8 years have made the soil very loose and easy to work in. BUT THE WIND BLOWS IT AWAY!! GRRRRR. Plus the garden is afflicted with Bermuda grass, Bindweed and a few other nuisance weeds whose name I do not know. Bermuda grass will shade out. But Bindweed will grow in circles if it can't find light.

That bed in the picture above is my asparagus bed. I grow garlic and also things I just want to keep somewhere temporarily in the front of the bed.

Getting a few stalks of asparagus every day. It's enough for me, and Hubs will not eat it. Asparagus is good for your liver. So are onions and dandelion greens. I ate some of these before I got back into the house.

This is the next bed over, to the east. The bed we just looked at is on the left. This is usually where I like to grow peas first and then black-eye peas when it's hot weather. But my tomatoes are here now. I decided to grow hybrid varieties this year because I've had such a terrible time keeping heirloom plants alive, what with our wacko, "did you know Mother Nature hates you" weather. I grew them inside under light and transplanted them after the last (finally) frost. Those birdhouses, Hubs made for me out of wood scraps. They are for Eastern bluebirds and we have had several in the yard since we put them up a few years ago. They are so cute with their little orange bellies and blue backs. They build in there and so do the House Wrens. Bitty birds are safe behind those small holes with no perches. If there's a perch, a bigger bird will sit on it and keep the mama bluebird from getting to her babies. It will also often hack away at the opening with it's beak till it can get inside.

The bed that's in the foreground, closest to the birdhouse, was my Albion strawberry bed. I mulched too heavily one winter and lost all but three plants. I keep trying to coax them to make runners and baby plants but so far all they have managed to do is stay alive. So I use the rest of the bed as a nursery for plants I have not grown before. So far this year I have put what's left of my Rattlesnake Master seedlings and what I think is a couple of tropical milkweed seedlings, but not sure because after I had them up good in wintersowing containers, it got too cold and a lot of them died. I just planted a variety of calendula seed along one side of that bed. It's supposed to have black centers and very bright orange petals.

I call this bed "The Oklahoma bed" because it has a panhandle. This is the southwestern corner. In the nearest red tubs are jalapeno peppers. There are fava beans around the inside edges.

This is the 'panhandle and that's where I've planted beets. Oh, I guess I've reached some kind of limit for pictures as the photo option is all grayed out and it won't do anything when I click on it. I'll continue on a second post.

Very nice, Rockwhisperer!! thank you for sharing! This is my first year planting onions and garlic. I'm hoping it works!

Continuing on...

The beets have finally come up:

I'm growing lots of weeds here as well, but I was afraid to weed in this bed at all. Last year, I only got three beets out of all the seed I planted. THREE. These took forever to come up and I'm not even sure I'm going to have full rows. But I am watering diligently because water is crucial at this point and I can't wait for it to fall from the sky.One little Vates blue kale came up and I see it's planning on making seed. I planted more seed but haven't seen any emergence yet.This is the last bed on the east, with the top of the Oklahoma bed just showing on the left side of the picture. We have three stockwire arches set up to go over the walkway between the Oklahoma bed and the far eastern bed. Usually I use it to grow peas, beans, and cukes. This year, there are peas at most of them. We always run out of peas before the new crop so I wanted more this year. So I used all the arches for the peas. Along the right edge of this bed shown are coffee tubs protecting cheese peppers. Some will be red, some will be orange and some will be yellow. I always let them begin to show color before I pick and after they have finished developing in the house, I chop them and freeze them without blanching. One year I tried steaming first, but I didn't find the end product any better. Down the middle of the bed are Copenhagen Market cabbage. At the far end of this bed is where the rest of the tomatoes are.That's my compost bin to the left. I use it for pulled weeds but no bermuda grass or bindweed. My kitchen scraps get buried directly in the garden, a different place each time.And these are Mammoth sunflowers, planted along the fence. I grow them for the seeds. I enjoy them and so do the Goldfinches. We have two orioles in the yard, speaking of yellow birds, and they are into the hummingbird feeders to the point where they won't let the hummers feed. So we had to take the perch off one of the feeders for the hummers.

There are Aronia bush cuttings in between the sunflowers but I don't think they
took. My mother bush has leafed out and they are still sitting there
with buds unopened.

Well, I think that's plenty for a tour right now. Some of the fruit trees have started blooming again, so maybe we'll have fruit this year.

Oh htwo, that reminded me, I do have Candy onions tucked in here and there. I grew some from seed this year and they are still tiny in the herb garden. I thought they might be big enough to separate by now but it's not working that way. Maybe they will be able to winter over and bulb up next year, but probably won't. Probably will make a flower and no seed, because they're a hybrid, and divide into two pitiful onions. Have had that happen with Candy before.

Your garden looks great ilene. I too have a lot of trouble with beets. My onions aren't huge yet but I think I'll still manage some decent sized bulbs this year. Here's a picture I got of my front garden today from atop the rock pile I have from digging. I still have maybe one or two more beds to dig soon when time manages, but I'm not sure the size yet.

We got some much needed rain last night and I went out this morning to find my golden squash with 2 of the biggest, most beautiful blooms I've ever seen. I stood there and admired it for at least 5 minutes - didn't get a pic tho! The chickens and dogs probably thought I was crazy. I had a full, albeit 1 sided, conversation with all my plants, asking how the liked the storm and how they were feeling, told them all how beautiful they were and that they were going to grow up and be strong and healthy. Maybe I'm batty, but I think it helps. It certainly does my houseplants anyways, and I have a collection of over 40.

I'm hoping for a good onion crop, I planted 3 different kinds. We eat onions in almost everything, so they will go quick! When we built our house, we built a "root cellar" under the friends entrance porch. We have a full basement, so this room is in the upper corner, 13" of concrete on all 4 sides, with metal door. It's about 6'x12' with 2 PVC pipes built in, one at the top to carry warm air out, one that extends all the way to the floor to bring cool air in. I'm hoping to get to see how well it works this fall.

Speaking of compost piles, all my scraps, weeds, everything goes straight into the chicken run. They eat, scratch, turn, poop, basically do all the work for me! At the end of each year, I plan to take the bottom layers out and put on the garden. We'll see how that works, too!

Jacob, that rock pile looks all too familiar!

I wonder if my neighbors think I'm crazy sometimes. I always talk to my plants outside- the plants or my cat. I enjoy a good conversation with my garlic. lol

Oh, I wish I had a root cellar. When we had the storm cellar put in, I went one step bigger because I planned to use it as a root cellar. It freezes down there, unfortunately, so no can do. *Sigh*. I talk to my plants, too. Can't hurt, might help. I'm 71, so I don't care if anyone thinks I'm nuts. Just so long as they don't haul me off to a nursing home.