Bob and Sherle have one of the most amazing gardens on the planet. Last year Sherle sent in photos of their garden {see them HERE} and shared pictures of her husband standing next to their tomato plants that were over 10 feet tall. Wowza!
Well we are all in for a treat because Sherle just sent in photos from this year garden and let me tell you, they are just spectacular. I hope I can have a garden that will look as good as hers someday.
Here is what Sherle had to share…
Compost Surprise: We dug up and flipped the compost bin this spring to get planting soil and when we turned it we realized we hadn’t watered it well enough to cook everything down so we still had bits in there. After putting what hadn’t cooked down back in the bin things began growing.
I didn’t hold out much hope for the plants but they took off and I have pumpkins growing everywhere. There is also purple sweet potatoes growing from the bin. We’ll have to dig up the bin this fall to see if we get any sweet potatoes.
Garden #1: This is the main garden at the house, where we are growing 7 varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, tatuma squash, cube o’ butter summer squash, jalapeno’s, pickling cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, potatoes, tomatillos and sweet potatoes.
Everything is so tall and I have to climb a ladder just to get some type of a picture. Sometimes I wish I was comfortable enough on the roof to get a picture from there.
Garden #2 Tires: This is my raised bed garden. Since I couldn’t afford any wood to make my raised bed garden and since my sons work had tires to spare and I had read about using them I decided to give it a try.
I gave it a go last year and it wasn’t as productive as I had hoped it would be. This year I tried a couple of different things and having drip irrigation has helped a lot.
I still need better soil in the tires, but it’s producing really well. I will be planting more beets very soon, for a winter crop.
I’m growing or have grown, garlic, beets, watermelon, three types of green beans, 4 or 5 different types of peppers, (some hot, some sweet,) eggplant, and an unknown melon (I think), from the compost used in the soil that popped up amongst the yellow green beans.
Garden #3: We grow our corn here, planting each row one week apart. I don’t know exactly how effective this is, but it works great when processing the corn. We gather just enough to get them processed in one afternoon with all four of us working. This year, HH calculated how we might try for two crops in one year.
We planted in the holes we pulled the corn from, definitely not the best idea, since the nitrogen is a bit poor, but with a nitrogen supplement we have hopes for something reasonable. It’s an experiment, the corn looks great, so far and we’ll see what the end result is.
Garden #4: This garden is, in part, a thank you to the folks who let us garden at their place. We planted summer squash, tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, zucchini and some plants that popped up in the compost. It turns out that these seem to be a cross between zucchini and butternut squash, we call them zucchinuts, lol.
They cook up like zucchini but they have light orange flesh. We also planted winter squash out here, large pumpkins, sugar pie pumpkins, pink banana squash, sweet meat squash, honey boat delicata squash, my first time trying several of these, but I’m always up for adventure. Oh yeah, we have potatoes and butternut as well.
I tried sweet potatoes here but we missed a week of watering so they died before they could get started. There are two big problems this year with this garden, one being the soil needs treatment so we are going to try and solve that with horse manure and compost in the fall. The other issue is the ground squirrels or gophers. We don’t have a solution for those yet, if you or any of your readers have suggestions, I’ll take them.
Garden #5: This garden is actually a cover crop for the corn garden next year. Though we are still planning on picking a bunch of pinto beans when it’s time. The beans help to introduce the nitrogen into the soil that the corn will need.
We had to build something for them to climb on, HH and son made the uprights and cross pieces while I and our daughter hung and tied all the strings for the beans to climb up. The beans have taken to climbing quite well, though I don’t have super recent pictures.
I’ve included a sunset picture that was particularly spectacular last month.
~Sherle
If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:
- Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so, show me some picture of how you are going about it.
- Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
- Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
- Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
- Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.
If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.
Go HERE for the official rules.
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