I love it! It would be fun to trip across an unknown vegetable garden hidden by all the vibrant growth around it.

Do you harvest your chicory in spring? Since having it in Rome I’ve bought and sown this seed . https://seedsofitaly.com/chicory-selvatica-da-campo/

How do you keep animals out of your secret veg patch?

I'd love to hear more about where the vegetable plants are in there? Don't the dry beans have to climb on something? How does the sqaush manage with so many plants, aren't they shading it out? That's not dill with the Verbena?

That is so interesting Christopher. That is a good size garden. How long have you been doing that? Do you feel like you get a harvest that is worth the time spent? It's right along the street, and no one takes any of your produce when they become ripe, or they just don't see that it is there? What are you growing in the tomatoe cages? You have a short season, when is your garden done for the season?

I have a lot of trouble with rabbits and this year a ground hog. I was off to a slow start in the spring because of other priorities and then once I started planting and they were growing, along came the ground hog and ate everything I planted. So I have written off my vegetable garden season. I don't have the energy to put into place something that will keep everything out and I can't cooexist. The rabbits choose my vegetable beds to start their hutches and we're on our third generation of baby rabbits. I'm going to have to figure something out or give up vegetable gardening. Allthough, they also eat my perennials too. Asters, lilies, hostas. They love my yard, it's a buffet for them.

I've been watching Homestead rescue and the troubles that people out in the wilderness have growing food. They either end up installing electric fence or build a green house. or both. They do have to live on what they grow and their livestock.

Maybe try the wild chicory leaves next spring. That’s the kind I ate in Italy, sautéed with olive oil and garlic, and the kind I’ve planted on my allotment. I sometimes add sprinkle of parsnip florets to green salads.

Lovely

Prairiemoon I have been growing the roadside vegetable garden for the 15 years I have been here. Even with my lazy approach the bounty is well worth the effort. I keep my mom supplied with tomatoes, she loves her tomatoes, and there are enough of them, peppers and sometimes green beans left over for freezing.

I can foresee the need for fencing in the Turnip Fields being developed in the back 40 far away from the scenic byway. I want to grow more perennial crops like asparagus and raspberry. As the trees come down the added sunlight has changed the vegetation so much it is a giant salad bowl for deer which makes my deer hunter quite happy. The oddest predation I have dealt with was the box turtles eating my strawberries. The human predation has been confined to the flowers. One year a bunch of sunflowers went missing.

Floral I will have to try the parsnips florets. The seed pods of radish are another very tasty addition to salad. I tell myself that letting a number of these salad greens self sow is the path to a bountiful foragers garden.

Christopher, I don't see how you can say the 'lazy approach'. [g] ANY vegetable garden is work! You're fortunate to have such a great property to be ablie to raise your own food. Asparagus and raspberry plans sound great. Box turtles eating strawberries sounds funny but, I'm sure you didn't think so. lol

Continued good luck with it and thanks for sharing your garden with us, I find it inspiring.

Prairiemoon the lazy I guess is that I don't fuss over the vegetable garden much. I add organic matter to the soil regularly, plant a bunch of stuff and eat what happens. It is the only garden on the property that is mulched which keeps the weeding to a minimum. Not that I weed here. I edit.

It took a while to solve the box turtle puzzle. Seeing golf ball size box turtles was worth the sharing. I may grow strawberries again. Turtles would be easy to fence out.

There is no room to expand. The vegetable garden is surrounded. The daylilies are my mother's doing. It was her sunlight before it was mine.

Christopher it’s gorgeous. 🙂

Prairiemoon2, Homestead Rescue is one of my favorites! We have to fence the rabbits out too. We are trying to grow/produce 30-50% of what we eat from our garden and chickens. I’ve picked up lots of tips from that show!

Christopher - You must have good soil. What kind of organic matter do you add and what do you mulch with? Do you have any significant problems with insects or disease?

The dayllies really are an inspired addition, really disguises that it is a vegetable garden.

Anyway, looks like a little slice of heaven!

Really ShadyWillows? My son recommended Homestead Rescue to me recently and I've been hooked. lol Their challenges make mine seem pretty minor. Have you tried any of their solutions? They seem to have to solve the same problems over and over. Water, power, keeping animals away from the garden and the livestock. Amazing innovative ways of doing it.

I have “Excavator” on my Christmas list. ☺️ They inspired me to get a greenhouse and experiment more seriously with food production.

Beautiful! Definitely my kind of garden.... and I hope you eat those daylilies! all parts of H. fulva are edible. :)

Christopher, a wild parsnip plant is rampant on the side of our WI country roads. I have some that pops up around my horses' drylot and tries to invade my pasture. I "edit" it non-stop. Is the "feral parsnip" you refer to the same kind as here that burns if skin touches it in sunlight? Are you able to avoid it? Doesn't it spread into your garden? It looks so lovely in that photo.

Prairiemoon my roadside vegetable garden was a pull off the side of the road parking lot for a long time with compacted road shoulder dirt. Over the years I have added woodchips, horse, alpaca and goat manure, bagged manure and lately mostly bagged hardwood mulch. The organic matter is always used as a mulch on top. This is a no till garden. That is what God made earthworms for. I have just rotated the potatoes over the years for some earth turning. The soil is super fluffy now.

I don't grow things that are subject to debilitating pestilence. That includes all members of the brassica family. Too many caterpillars to remove. I gave up on sweet corn after five years because the raccoons always harvested the entire row in one night of gluttony three or four days before I was ready to harvest it. Some years I do have to hit the tomatoes with a fungicide for the late blight, but that is no big deal.

barncatz I would think your WI plant is a different species, look alike plant. Take some pics for name that plant. It can be ID'd. I have seen a parsnips mimic along our roadsides too. Mine are for real vegetable parsnips. They don't burn my skin.

I love all the parts of your garden and your frequent updates. I, too, gave up on cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower after last year's caterpillar invasion. Sweetcorn, too, for the same reason as yours--why invite trouble to the garden? I'll still handpick tomato hornworms and squash bugs. I had to cage some low-hanging tomatoes last year to discourage a box turtle. I'd love to plant hosta in my shady block garden, but I know the deer would come for the 'all you can eat' salad bar.

Had my first zucchini of the season last night in a salad and introduced the younger grandson to a 'Double Cutie' daylily bud today. He's not a fan of the taste of either. :P He loves peppers--had a semi-ripe yellow one on his pizza sandwich for lunch.

Speaking of others helping themselves to garden plants--a year ago I noticed someone had filched the whole center of my 'Sum and Substance' hosta. Whoever did it either came prepared with a shovel or knew where I kept the garden tools. I suspect it was the guy who had done some brush cutting for me the previous year and was still working for someone in my family. I would have gladly given him a start if he'd just asked. At least he left me the small starts around the edge, so the plant is recovering. My relative recently fired him (for a different reason), so I hope he won't be stopping by again.

Taking the middle of a hosta sounds difficult. It is much easier to divide hosta in halves and quarters.

Christopher - Sounds like you did just the right thing to bring back your soil. A no till garden is what I was aiming for but I am on a 1/4 acre with a lot of trees surrounding me within 5ft of my lot line, so as far as I could get away from the tree line, didn’t help. I built raised beds and I cover crop and add organic matter as mulch as well. The problem is the tree roots grow up into my beds. I dig them out in the spring and have to pull out roots - it’s a big job. Then the next spring, the beds are full again and I have to do it all over again.

I’m at the end of the life of my wooden beds and I’m planning to try something new next year. Large containers that the roots can’t grow up into. Maybe like a water tank for livestock. I don’t like growing in containers but I haven’t come up with any idea to deal with the tree roots otherwise.

What does growing potatoes do for turning over the soil?

I don’t grow corn, not enough room and I have part sun, not full sun. I only have one 15x15 bed that is in full sun and I grow a few tomatoe and pepper plants with my perennials there every year. I don’t do too badly with brassicas, I have seen wasps patrolling the beds for caterpillars in the spring and that has worked out for me. Of course, in my small garden, I'm not growing a huge amount.

Shady Willow - an 'excavator' on your Christmas list!! lol That and a chainsaw seems to be the recipe for success...lol.

Taking the middle of a hosta sounds difficult. It is much easier to divide hosta in halves and quarters.

I don't think whoever took it was trying to be careful--he was probably in a hurry, so he just took a shovel and cut out the middle. I wouldn't have known if I hadn't found the hole in the ground sometime later.

I believe it..... and I can see where plants are hidden. I'm a lazy gardener too. I feed the soil, the soil feeds my food :) Sometimes my love laughs and tells me if I'm a lazy gardener, how much work does a not lazy one do?

I do have some parsnip envy going on. Out past the old stableyard I'm currently converting into a new gardenyard is a large open square of mostly grass and some wildflowers. We jokingly refer to it as the future vodka patch- my love has a fun dream of growing and making parsnip vodka. I just dream of having a feral patch so we can eat to our hearts content. I'm currently growing out some other things for their feral patches out back, but in a year or two at least a little vodka patch will get growing in.

Harvesting potatoes you need to go deep and wide with the garden fork to avoid stabbing them. That lifting of the soil is much the same as plowing or tilling. For me it has also been a way to find and remove the compacted in place buried rocks as the ground softens deeper down.

How nice - it looks lovely!

Box turtles are so cool. I used to have one that lived in my yard and I would hand feed it earthworms. It would appear when I called 'hey turtle', and chomp up a worm or 3 with relish.