I will show you my garden and I hope that you will show me yours, even if it is a gorgeous solitary pot on the balcony of your condo… or a grand allotment by the sea or a corner by the shed, a patch out the front by the road..a space cleared out in the forest or at your mothers place.. I would love you to show me your garden too..
Here are a few corners of my garden. You know that we work towards Free Days, where the farm feeds the farm. So we grow a lot of vegetables, for us and the animals. 
Later we will be putting pumpkin plants for the cows winter feed into the flower gardens. The flower gardens are huge and heaving with flowers for the bees at this time of year. Later the plants die back a bit and in go the pumpkins and they weave themselves along the flower beds protecting the plants roots from the heat. This is the Wendy house where we store all the wood. We heat with a wood stove during the winter(no central heating) and anyone who has a tree come down calls us and we collect the wood. We have never had to cut down a tree to heat ourselves. 
This is the entrance to Stalkers garden. This garden is about 20 foot by 30 foot and would fit nicely into a small backyard. All the beds are raised and mowed in between. And it has an area where I can sit with a cup of tea. 
This is Stalkers Garden from another angle. Not my favourite shot but you get the idea. This entire fence will eventually be covered in grape vine. So it will be like a walled garden.
Here is the Frog Garden. This has a small pond underneath the boardwalk which keeps the soil moist. It is already full of very merry frogs. It is fed with rain water from the guttering on the Wendy House. The theory is that the garden is self watering by storing its own rainwater. The pond watering the roots from below. And it works. The frogs keep the water clean. It is a small garden about 18 foot by 10 foot ( I am terrible at gauging these things) so would fit easily into a small back yard of a working person who does not have a lot of time to water or who has water restrictions. This is a raised bed too. 
The frog garden has a wall of yellow blossom clover for shelter which is a great favourite of the bees. Wind is a wicked problem out here on the prairie so shelter is a consideration. 
This is more yellow blossom clover in the bee garden. Because of the risk of contamination to the bees from the surrounding GM crops I plant organic yellow blossom clover and organic buckwheat in big wild plantings for the bees. Also the fields have a lot of white and red clover in there. Hopefully the bees go for the good flowers first.
Is it me or is every single one of these shots a little bit wonky. My eye has to have everything straight or it gets upset… I must have been having a crooked day yesterday. 
I saw no queen cells as I went through the hives yesterday. So far so good. I am not afraid of being stung. So I do not have a suit. This is the sum total of my bee keeping gear. 
I am more concerned about the million eyes watching me work. I just feel so Judged!
Here is one of the onion beds. With the potatoes in the background. They are mostly out of the shot and there are ten baby blueberry bushes in between.
The potatoes should be good this year as the spring has been long and cool. Potatoes like cool feet. You know that I am working towards growing enough produce to store as a winters supply. So we can live off the land for an entire year. That is a lot of onions and potatoes Let alone all the rest! Even though I grow more and more each year I have not been able to grow enough. I can see why the pioneers ate a lot of beans!
There are two more big open gardens and they look a bit like this. 
The plants are quite small and not terribly photogenic. You will note the potatoes in the back of this shot too, we are looking back. There is still plenty of room for successive plantings. Our animals help us make a lot of compost and I have a large pile of straw from the winter barn as well, so all the soil has compost dug into it, then straw or compost on top.
Good morning. That was a little wander about a few of the Kitchen’s Garden gardens. We walked down roughly half of the South side from West to East. Actually the bees should have come first but never mind. As you can imagine there is more. We can look at them another day. Plus the flower beds have more vegetables popped into corners and the herb garden close to the kitchen door is already on the verge of being out of control! So I need to start drying herbs already. The first one is the parsley. I just pick and pop it whole into a paper bag and store it in the back of the fridge for a few months. Then transfer the dried leaves into a jar. It is so easy it is silly!!
I hope you all have a fabulous day in the garden, or at work, in the kitchen or at your desk, just pottering about making your life worthwhile. That is what I will be doing. Remember life is a journey. No pressure to get to the finish line! Just Live it. Eyes wide open!
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
85 responses to “And I want to see your garden too…”
It was wonderful to see these shots Celi…it´s all looking so lovely! If I was location manager for movies I´d be kncking on your door…mind you, I can´t see the animals taking kindly to film crews tramping around poking those big hairy microphones up their snouts and beaks! I will have to think seriously about going outside and taking some photos of our garden to share with you all 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration.
We would love to see your garden.. I am interested in seeing how your lemon tree is too..c
I like your fence around the Stalker’s Garden better than mine…How on earth did it earn its name?
I really love when you do these types of posts – it gives some perspective when you talk about where you are for the day.
We (possibly) have a few rainless days ahead, so maybe I can get some walkabout shots of my own… 🙂
Have a good day!
Stalkers Garden is named after a gardening friend who once covered his entire backyard in straw then planted raised beds amongst it. This garden started like that but then I could not bear the straw being wasted in pathways, so we began to mow in between instead however it has retained its name. I am looking forward to seeing your shots! c
Such a wonderful farmy Celi! It is a joy to read it and about you and Our John and all the characters on it daily! Also to see and rejoice in how you are becoming sustainable, and to have another picture of where we are also headed. Thank you!!!
It is lovely ploddy work, there is pressure but not often, so it is a simple sweet lifestyle, i am sure you will love it! c
I am simply amazed at how far ahead your growing season is than ours here in southeastern Minnesota. I enlarged my small garden this year to include pots of basil, oregano and even two potatoes. I don’t have much space or sun to grow a big garden. I also have two tomatoes, spinach and Romaine lettuce. So I am jealous of all your gardens and all that fresh food you will have. Yum.
You will LOVE you potatoes when you dig them. That lettuce and spinach will do well where it is not too hot..you don’t need a big space to call it a garden and with successive plantings you will be excited about how much food you can grow.. Morning audrey!! c
Really enjoyed the tour! What a good idea to do pumpkins when some of the flowers start to die off.
I am so intrigued by your frog houses and garden. And what a good idea to have a pond under the bridge in the middle to naturally water from underneath! You have so many good ideas and are so creative. I’m going to have to put some of those to use when we move!
Have a lovely day ~ April
When you get that larger acreage i hope there is a pond or somewhere for a pond, water is wonderful in a property. We only have a ditch that was a creek down the back and it is inaccessible really.. so deep and wide, I must show you one day.. so i am am very fond of our little rainfilled board walk.. c
Your garden is huge and so productive! It was interesting to get out in it.
My garden at the moment is a red rose in a champagne glass. I will go to the bloemenmarkt tomorrow morning (I’m bodily in Amsterdam. My blog is flying there today) to see if there are any tulips left.
Well you are in the right place for tulips i guess.. they must have the most beautiful flower markets! Morning to you in Amsterdam! c
How very inspirational Celi. I cannot wait to see more. Must say though, as lovely as these shots are, it is quite odd not seeing any of the animals. 😉
I see what you mean about the pics – is it not maybe the angle (lines) of everything in the shots? Don’t think you have a wonky eye problem.
🙂 Mandy
It is funny to have no animals isn’t it I am always careful not to overwhelm you all with too many shots, so all the animal goings on yesterday were left in the can.. and then because I only post current images, they will stay there. Both are hard and fast rules (current + concise). Today i shall be shooting in the fields again though.. c
What a great garden tour. Thank you. Your potatoes and onions look way further on than here. I would take photos of my veg to show you, but am ashamed they are so small! Jock didn’t want to plant potatoes this year as something nasty ate a lot of last year’s crop, but there are quite a few potato plants in some very odd places. We’re eating the first lot of salad crops, but the succession sewings are minute, due to the horribly cold wet weather we’ve been having. But at last there is warm sunshine, and I am now going outside to quilt on the verandah.
There is nothing nastier than digging up a rotton potato. nice that they have self seeded for you though!! Enjoy your work in the sun, it sounds perfect. Soon i am going to have a cup of tea and toast with jam in the sun on my verandah, so i am kind of joining you! morning Viv! c
My “garden” (the food I grow in pots) is tinier than ever this year. I haven’t bought any tomato plants (usually I buy three in April) and I haven’t planted my pepper seeds given me by another blogger. All I have at the moment is a pot of mint and some chives that have seen better days.
MINT! you cannot do without a pot of mint! Fresh Mint and new potatoes .. yum and chives on baked potatoes.. I sense a potato theme! c
a great philosophy to live by! i love your gardens. i grew wonderful potatoes a couple years ago and the self seeded this year but with this heat i don’t expect much out of them. i was at the food coop recently and heard a man talking about growing medicinal plants with great healing powers. he said his bees polinize them and he eats the honey every day and is as healthy as a horse. however, i did not hear which plant he grows. interesting though!
Find that man! tho I have heard that a teaspoon of local honey every day has the power to keep hayfever at bay! we need to do some research into those herbs.. good eavesdropping! c
What a great challenge and incentive. I love to see your early garden before it is fully lush and grown. I always loved my vegetable garden and did well with it, but I finally gave it up because I was defeated by the chipmunks, groundhogs and rabbits that feasted on its gains the moment the vegetables were ripe. I asks everywhere and nobody had an answer to this problem, short of killing the pests. So I have settled on produce from our local Farmer’s Market every Sunday morning.
This is one of the reasons we have fenced a couple of gardens, tho i have had very little problem since I got the barn cats! However if you have a good farmers market then you are doing VERY WELL indeed, getting fresh produce and helping to employ the people that grow it! morning Ronnie.. c
I feel a bit guilty when I see your garden, Celi–mine is just decorative with no other purpose! I do grow herbs, but just pretty ones! I can’t imagine how you manage all the animals AND the gardens–you are truly an inspiration. May I ask what is climbing over the entrance to the Stalker’s Garden (great name)?
That is a wild clambering rose, that died back and shot from the root stock, and is probably prettier than the white one I had chosen!! c
I am impressed! My whole garden would probably fit into your Stalkers garden and embarassingly all ornamental 😦 I have decided in spring to try planting a few vege’s inbetween the ornamentals, we have silly rules against planting vege gardens in our gated complex. We are expecting our first frost any day now, and we never get any of the fun white stuff you guys do.
I dry long branches of Rosemary upside down in my garage near the Worm FArm – keeps the flies and gnats away too. Missed the fur kids today. 🙂 Laura
I love dried rosemary and I often pop red cabbages, red peppers and cherry tomatoes into the flower garden, they look gorgeous, would pass as ornamental PLUS will feed you.. silly rules!! Morning Laura!
Oh it was so exciting to have a peek around the garden! I am absolutely on love with the Frog Garden. It is do sensible and it must resound with the croaky chorus of its inhabitants. I’m heading out to the garden tomorrow. I shall try to follow suit, although we’ve only got two acres to document.
Two acres is enormous, I look forward to seeing it all, though so far it looks great! c
i love your frog garden and would love for you to do a detailed post about how you put it together and with what, etc. etc.
as for potatoes – have you ever thought of growing them in tires? i have been growing them this way for 5yrs and our worst harvest was 120lbs of potatoes (i was aiming for 160lbs). growing them in tires takes up way less room as well. and you don’t have to harvest them all at one time. if you are interested you can read more about our set-up here:
http://framboisemanor.blogspot.ca/2012/01/last-of-potatoes.html and here:
http://framboisemanor.blogspot.ca/2012/05/happy-potatoe-planting-day-woohoo-and.html
i really enjoyed walking around the garden with you today! your friend,
kymber
I went and looked.. told john and he brightened up at the thought.. there are no shortage of tires over at the workshop at the big farm! what an excellent recycling idea! well done for sending me the links too, it makes things so much easier.. c