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…”
I have a tiny garden and mine is definitely not as impressive as yours. I grow all my herbs and veggies in pots!
Thanks for the tip on th edying of parsley – I have a lot!
I had a tiny garden in one house once that i successive planted with joy// it was quite possibly the prettiest vege garden I ever had! c
Lovely garden!
I’m going to be outside for a few hours, putting new gears on a bicycle – I can’t say that it’s enjoyable, I’d definitely rather be gardening 😉
At least it is outside!! your bicycle does a lot of work, it needs that extra care! c
It certainly does – about 2,000 mile per year!
thought so!
I love that you tuck veggies in with your flowers…pretty and yummy.
When the grapes cover the stalkers garden fence…aahh, how peaceful a spot will that be.
It will be and they are growing fast! morning jess.. c
Your garden looks wonderful in that it produces your food and is eco friendly and ticks all the boxes. It’s a proper garden whilst ours is a resting place. It still involves work, but on a scale of 1-10, in comparison with yours, we’re on -10:)
I have restful flower gardens too, but I like yours because if I remember rightly you have a wine fridge out there, i am sure I read that once! I am very envious.. c
Just planted the veggie garden and when it does pop up I will show some pics. Still waiting for the heat to bloom out some of the plants and shrubs too. Slow start here. Have a Great Day – Beautiful Garden – loving your pics:)
Excellent, i am looking forward to the pics! c
My favourite kind of post celi! But first those red cabbages, I’m trying not to be tooooo envious, they look like beauties. Cabbages and me, well we are a bit hit and miss! And I remember reading about your wonderful frog garden with the water underneath, so clever. Ooo what next, I loved seeing the shots of your various veggies gardens, gave me a real perspective, I can see you and John now, working away, or maybe sitting back with that cup of tea. And simply, a lovely post, a lovely tone (as ever), aahhhh that’s better, I’ve just spent the day in London and that has restored me. Claire
Those cabbages are from last year, they sat under the snow and then kind of regrew! wild! oh dear a day in london, I remember those, dusty hot and my feet would be black above my sandals, like a black sun tan.. eeoo.. c
How very inspirational!
May I ask, as I’m being think, how the water reaches the beds from the pond under the board walk? I presume the water is within a container / liner of some kind?
Yes sarah, there is a liner under the pondy bit, which is deep in the middle and shallower under the soil which also has old bricks and stuff .. I am going to have to draw a picture, it is very simple though.. but hard to explain.. c
Oh, to have some of that sweet, sweet honey right now…
I know! ways to go yet though.. c
Thanks, Celi, for today’s stroll through your gardens. I’ve got a busy day and will be leaving at dawn tomorrow for Zia’s. My to-do list is a mile long and taking a break to look at gardens is just what I needed. 🙂
You have a good drive, at least the weather is looking settled! Give my love to Zia, the darling girl.. hope you two are going to be cooking!! c
Not to worry! I’ll be sure to show her your posts; she loves the farmy and will love seeing the lambs and peacocks. And there are a number of others’ blogs that she likes me to show her so she can catch up. I’m bringing her some special foods that she cannot get up there and a special gift set from a thoughtful friend. If this keeps up she’ll be spoilt rotten!
The lawns are mowed, the car washed & the trunk emptied, laundry done, and groceries bought. I’ve yet to weed the dog run. My back lawn looks awful but that dog run apparently has some of the most fertile land on the planet. Take care and we may not be commenting but we will be reading. 🙂
Yeah. My blog post yesterday had our garden pic. It doesn’t look quite the same as yours.
NO, because your garden has turtles in it!! I wish mine did.. c
Mine has a dead cabbage in it.
saw that.. oh dear.. c
You are so much further along than us! And much more green as you say! All of my seeds have now popped out of the ground, so that is good.
We won’t see Sweet Clover here (yellow clover) until late July. It’s amazing how very diverse our country is!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
It amazing isn’t it.. i drove from chicago to california a year ago and a bit ago and was astounded..c
I thoroughly enjoy your walkabouts, Celi! And your garden is a delight to me…huge by any standards I know, but really well conceived and your planning efforts do show. I love your goal of enough abundance to manage one year’s worth of “feed off the land” provisions. And I will share my garden photos along the way…as I have any successes 🙂 I get so thrilled with every “positive” I probably won’t be able to contain myself. I’m glad you share so liberally, as I learn along the way. The beekeeping is just fascinating. Worrisome, but fascinating. Debra
I adored the shots of your garden my friend – there are so many wonderful patches to put to use for so many awesome things 🙂
My garden? Haha how about one single pomegranate tree which is successful – even that only because of my grandparents 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
pomegranates! wow.. does it fruit?.. c
Such a beautiful garden and tour, Celi. I just harvested my first little group of beans and have baby cherry tomatoes coming along…I can’t give up hope that I’ll get a tomato or two!
you have beans already? ours are up.. well that will be tasty, the first ones are always the best! .. morning betsy..
I have a small raised bed herb and salad garden. Nothing large or spectacular. I don’t have time to weed, and hoe and all of that. Yours looks beautiful.
The one important thing with gardens is to plant what you have time for.. this is my job so I have more time, a working person needs a small garden of exactly what she wants to eat and has time to manage! Yours sounds perfect! c