The (not-so) Secret Garden

Last year, Neil rode the mechanical bull (our term of endearment for our ancient relic of a rototiller) to cut three massive gardens: the studio bed (roughly 75’x25’), the oak bed (roughly 120’x30’), and the barn bed (about 25’x25’).  All three are again planted, and we’ve been expanding even further!  We reclaimed two long raised stone garden beds that housed mainly grass for the past decade to create a mixed lettuce bed and a perennial herb garden, and have built a “secret garden” with raised beds (special thanks to Don & Deb Hudson of Valleypine Farms for the spruce wood and raspberry plants and Trevor Miller for the milling!) for strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and haskap berries.

We are tailoring the gardens to exceed our own consumption and produce a bounty that can be preserved, but at this rate we’re going to need a LOT more berries!  It’s just far to tempting to eat that perfectly ripe berry off the plant while in the garden!

With all the rain we’ve been having, the gardens are totally taking off, but so are the weeds!  Thanks to Marg Kerr for providing us with amazing straw bales, we’ve been laying down some thick straw mulch, which seems to make all the difference.

We noticed the first of the tomato flowers yesterday, and are looking forward to the amazing bounty to come!  We’ll keep you posted on the gardens’ progress as the summer progresses!