Three Day Weekend

This was a three day weekend, and we spent most of it gardening and cutting firewood. I was finally able to start the ornamental vegetable garden I envisioned. I recently learned that the garden style I wanted has a long history with a formal name: Potager. If there is an Italian equivalent, someone please let me know. Thanks to Melanie at Old Country Gardens for posting about Potageres.

Below is a Google Earth image of the area where I built the Potager. The garden is situated on a flat piece of land that I believe was formerly a growing field when our subdivision was a working farm. Since the road ends in a cove, I refer to that area as the "Cove Lot." It is a barren expanse of cement-like clay/dirt where a few weeds survive, fire ants have built some impressive high-rise developments, and a few crickets hang out.

Thankfully we have a monster vintage Troy Built tiller, a hand-me-down from my in-laws. It churned through the cement clay with ease. It took me three passes per row to get the depth and softness I wanted. I started tilling on Friday night at about 8pm, the earliest I was able to get started. I figured I would get about an hour in, but it turned out that the night was clear enough and the little street lamps were bright enough that I was able to finish the job around 11pm.


You can see the before and after of the ground following tilling, and also some of the chunks of concrete left from the house construction. I also tilled up pieces of wood, shingles, and scraps of metal.

On Saturday morning I was ready to start building the raised beds. I got little marking flags and my measuring tape and was ready to go. I had one yard of garden mix on the ground, two yards in the trailer, and I knew that would not be enough. I used the mix from the trailer so we could go get some more before the landscape place closed. I didn't want to be stranded on Sunday and Monday with no dirt!


I broke from the garden project on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning to split wood (I love the hydraulic wood splitter as much as the monster tiller), but by yesterday evening, the raised beds were complete, and I started putting in the plants.

I took these photos this morning. I couldn't wait to get out to the garden to see if it made it through the night. Sparing it from the deer, bunnies, and other woodland creatures may be my biggest challenge.

Happily, it is raining again today.

Above is a salsa garden: better boy tomatoes, jalapeno plants, a pablano plant, and lots of cilantro sprigs. I will leave the onions to the local growers; we have some fine vidalia growers in the area!


This is an Italian garden: about 6 varieties of tomatoes, lots of sweet basil, and oregano. In the picture below are two eggplants and zuccini. Sweet corn is in the longbed that runs down the center.

After all the rain we had, the tilled clay/dirt turned to the consistency of oatmeal. I couldn't get the trailer any closer to the beds, and there was no way to use the wheel barrow, so I hauled the garden mix one bucket at a time, sinking up to my ankles in the mush. At one point I could barely lift my feet out of it without leaving my boots behind.

It goes without saying that there is lots more I want to do with this bed. More raised beds, more plants, mulch, maybe a *little* water feature...