Gardens become a huge endeavor at new home in North Carolina

Those of you who are regular visitors of Photo Potpourri might recall that each growing season, I devote a post or two (or three) to progress I've made in developing my gardens at home. But I don't think I've ever undertaken a home gardening post of the magnitude you see here. And so ... I apologize in advance if this falls into that category of "too much information."

Since moving to North Carolina two years ago, Lee Ann has taken it upon herself to dive into the gardening hobby -- and with a passion. And it's appropriate; Lee Ann really is the one with the green thumb. She grew up in rural Indiana, where her family maintained a dairy farm and, later, her stepfather dedicated a portion of his homestead to growing various vegetables in modest gardens that were used to help feed the family of seven. So Lee Ann has some experience, or "exposure" at the very least. And what she didn't already know since our move here, she has learned through extensive study of various gardening-related videos on YouTube and from online gardening-related articles.

She started modestly in our first spring here. We picked a sun-friendly spot along the north driveway near the perimeter of our property. We assembled six raised beds of varying heights and depths, using cedar wood boards and concrete corner anchors. We had a nice harvest of various plantings -- lettuces, broccoli and cauliflower in the spring, and cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, squash and various in the summer. There might have been an egg plant in there, too.

But from almost the time we moved it, we had our eye on a larger space behind the detached garage. But there were a couple problems there. For once, there were trees in the way. Those trees actually presented two problems -- interference in sunlight with the prospective garden area as blocking needed sunlight on the side of the garage where we would install solar panels. So we removed four trees, one of them a huge one right next to the garage (which in my mind, removed the possibility that it or its branches would or could fall on the garage in a wicked storm. By the time we had the trees removed, however, it was too late for any planting to net a harvest in the first growing season.

The other problem was that the rest of the prospect garden area was covered with wild grass. We'd have to kill or remove it. You can see the overgrown grass through the arched iron gate in the picture below, a shot I took in autumn 2018, well before Lee Ann and Lea began their clearing project. The ornamental iron gate is history; it was extremely rickety when we moved in (the previous owners left it behind).

Lee Ann and her daughter Lea did just that in small increments this spring, and slowly, they went to
work to transform that desolate-looking area into a network of multiple raised beds that are filled with various plantings this summer. That's Lea you see in the photo at the right. She's working to rake up the grassy remains.

Right now, the two gardens are growing more tomatoes, a variety of peppers, cucumbers, green beans, wax beans, strawberries, zucchini, acorn and butternut squash, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, popcorn and sweet corn (and I'm probably missing a couple here).

That's the newer, larger and open area pictured in the photo leading off the post. It shows all of the second-year gardens except one that would be farthest on the left (it has strawberries and wax beans). The stump of the big tree we removed near the garage (which is immediately to where I'm standing) is in the foreground. The leafy patch in the middle is our fruit garden; that's where the melons and pumpkins are. Behind that bed are sweet corn and popcorn surrounded by green beans, a variation of the Native American "Three Sisters" planting concept that Lee Ann came across doing growing research online.

We harvested our second season of lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli, as well as peas, in the spring. She tried using the lower bed to grow garlic and onions, but that didn't turn out too well. The first few photos below are shots of the various gardens under construction.

Above is the area we set aside for the puppy garden and new coleus/lilies/hosta garden along the west perimeter of our property. This shot was taken in early spring of this year. (There is more on the finished puppy garden a ways down into the post.) Below is a look at the new open area garden beds under construction. You can see another of the tree stumps in the middle; the area we now have corn and green beans growing would be on the right (where you see dirt and some boards. 

Above: The new open area garden beds are father along in their construction, and this shot shows them in relation to the swing set, the detached garage (left) and the sun room in the back of the house. 

The first garden beds along the driveway went up in spring 2018. The infrastructure was mostly finished when the photo above was taken, but there was still dirt and plantings to be done. Below is a shot of a section of that garden where we planted a few cabbages and some lettuce. In the summer, we would use the trellis you see in the background to support the cucumbers we planted in that spot.

Developing that second, open garden area was work enough, but that's not where Lee Ann and Lea stopped. They also improved the landscaping around the puppy garden (the finished version shown in the two pictures below), created two ground-level beds in the backyard and put plantings in containers sprinkled on the perimeter of our back deck. Many of those containers have herbs, which help keep the mosquitoes away when we're sitting out there.

The puppy garden was designed (another Lee Ann project) to remember our two dogs, Molly and Bear, the corgi Sammy, the family pet of Lee Ann's son Jon, and Pippin, the dog of Lee Ann's sister Lisa, who lives in Ohio. She fashioned the primary stone center in a heart shape, surrounded it with flowers and a different color stone, and places memorial markers and dog statues. The statues for Pippin (center) and Bear (right) are facing the wrong way, but ... that happened from the grandkids playing in the backyard recently, so I left them along. Sammy is on the left and Molly in the back.

As always, to view a larger, sharper version of an image, simply click on the photo. This is particularly helpful for visitors accessing the blog using a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images from my garden shoot yesterday, click on the link in this sentence.

Photo geek stuff: I shot the garden photos using my Canon 6D and a Canon 24-105mm f/.4L lens. I bracketed every composition taken in the recent shoot for three exposures -- normal and 1/3 of a stop above and below normal, using the shutter speed as my exposure variable. I set the f/stop at 9.0 and used an ISO of 100 or 125. An interesting sidebar to this garden narrative and photo shoot is the lens I ended up using. It belongs to Lee Ann, and I turned to it as I collected the gear before the shoot. I wanted to to use my Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, but I could not find it. (I don't know about you serious photographers, but I stress quickly when I cannot find an important piece of gear like an L series lens). So I shot the whole session with a little stress doing a number on my attention span. Lee Ann and I went to look for the 24-70 together after the shoot. I found it in the kitchen, away from where there is a lot of traffic. Stress gone ... but oh, man, it was tense for a while. I will add that this is the first time I've ever used Lee Ann's 24-105 lens. It worked mostly fine, but I found that it had trouble focusing on closeup shots. When I told Lee Ann this, she said she has had the same experience with it. Most of the older photos were single-frame shots taken with the camera in my iPhone.

A long view (above) this year of the original garden along the driveway of the detached garage. Lee Ann has nets over a lot of the plants to protect them from critters; she also uses other devices to ward off unwanteds, including marigold plants (their scent keep some invaders away) and chimes. The huge foliage of zucchini (first below) always grabs my attention when I walk through the garden areas. Zucchini have been slow in coming; many more male blooms than female. The strawberries (left) and wax beans are in the same bed, but on the left (second photo below). One huge plus from Lee Ann's efforts to integrate zucchini and squash into the plantings is that it's made me a fan of those plants. I wouldn't eat them much before, but we have grilled zucchini and squash several times with our meals already this summer (we sprinkled them with olive oil and Morton's Nature's Seasoning, and they have been absolutely delicious.  

A closeup (above) of the fruit garden, and an ever closer shot (below) of one of the watermelons we're already seeing. Lee Ann hast it resting on a plastic spacing device so it doesn't get molded from damp ground below it.  

Above: For at least the short term, Lee Ann is devoting a full bed to herbs, which she said don't require premium soil to thrive. That's what you see here. This bed sits between the strawberry/zucchini/wax bean and tomato and peppers bed. 

A perspective shot of the corn and green bean garden (above). According to the “three sisters” concept, you can plant beans around the corn stalks, which the beans use as a kind of natural trellis device. Squash can be integrated into the planting scheme as well, and Lee Ann added some butternut squash to the immediate right of the photo above. Below are two closeups -- the first is of the corn top, including the small parts attached to the "branches" that pollinate the tassel (center of the second photo). That's popcorn on the right, and sweet corn on the left.   

Above and below are the two chime devices Lee Ann added to the bigger garden area to ward off unwanteds. The one above is in the corn and bean bed; the one below in the fruit bed. 

Lee Ann and Lea decided to use the newly created flower bed adjacent to the detached garage (above) as an experiment of sorts. They put in a variety of different species in there, a few grown from seed, others from plants bought at various area nurseries. Some closeups of those appear in the first four photos below.  

The sunflower above is the only one that survived (from critters) of the bunch that the women planted. Most of the sunflowers were planted in a row in front of the propane tank seen in the background of the lead-off photo, but critters (probably deer) got to them before the women could complete installing the fencing surrounding the garden. Critters also ate foliage of the lilies in the separate garden elsewhere in the backyard (first photo below), as well as all of the hostas we put in an existing garden in front of the house and almost all of the hostas in the coleus and lily garden pictured below. We had been contemplating creating an all-hostas garden in an area on the side of the house, but after what we saw critters do to the hostas we put in the gardens mentioned above, we are rethinking that idea. You can see the stripped lily stems on the right in the first photo below. A closeup of the coleus -- which the critters have left alone -- is in the second photo below. The lone surviving hosta (from the coleus garden) is shown in the third photo below. When I say "surviving," I mean a plant whose foliage was not eaten. As perennials, hostas will return next year. After this year's experience, though, we have to use the long time in the interim to figure out how to protect them. 

A dwarf lemon tree in a pot on the back patio (above), with early fruit evident on the far left. The start green, then turn their yellow. Across the patio from the lemon tree is a dwarf lime tree (below).

Above: A view of the back deck, where the green thumb ladies of the household have lined up various plants, many containing herbs to ward off pesky insects while we're sitting out there. 

Over by the original driveway beds, you can find this blackberry bush (above) and sweet potatoes (below), both covered with netting to protect against intruding critters. 

A "renegade tomato" plant (above) in the original garden beds and more peppers (below). Early on in my decade or so of experience growing summer tomatoes, it was my understanding that tomatoes are a one-and-out plant. But I learned quickly that seed from tomatoes you don't completely removed from the ground in the fall (and there is lots), can grow the following season. "Renegade tomatoes" is my term to refer to such regrowth tomato plants. I've been fortunate to have anywhere from two or three to a dozen or more such regrowths each season in my tomato gardens. 

Above: This bed, at the far end of the original bed network along the driveway, was a rung lower until just recently and was used earlier to try and grow onions and garlic (and possibly one or two other herbs). But those didn't fare well here. So Lee Ann added a cedar board rung and added more dirt in hopes of utilizing it for fall plantings of lettuce, peas, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. 

A look (above) at one of the flower acquisitions Lee Ann made but hasn't made it into the ground or onto a hanging hook just yet. I believe these are petunias. The two shots below -- which also could qualify as a recent addition to my periodic ("View from the Office Window" series) are the first blooms on our crepe myrtle tree behind the house. I took these photos, as you should have now deduced, from the window in my upstairs office.