On The Garden

I like Gardening.  I am also fairly bad at it.

The good thing about gardening is that it is a seasonal exercise in hope.  Every season I look through my catalog from Bountiful Gardens.  Every season I pick what I think will be something new and exciting to plant.  Every season I plant - and most seasons I get blown out.

It is not ever a total wash.  I somehow manage to have some notable successes - at least one - every year.  Part of the issue is where we live - when I really started back in 2004 I had our house in Old Home with the moved in top soil and the 12 hour sun exposure.  Since moving in 2009 I have had to fight a bad location (it was what was available in the rental) and a complete change in climates.  Relearning how to plant and when and what has been a learning experience.

Currently this is my gardening space:

The area on the top is approximately 10' x 4', the area on the bottom is 16' x 4' .  We are looking North..

The area just around the edge of the pad (no idea why the pad is there; although bearing Jambaloney's warning in mind about doing too much at once, I still admire the area as a potential forge) and between the fence is soil.  I had no luck with corn here but pretty decent luck with onions and volunteer sunflowers.

The part the runs along the side of the house has sort of evolved into the herb garden/place we plant pets and flowers.  I have planted thyme and rosemary; the green you see on the right is a volunteer oregano plant which has been there since we move in and has done fantastic (even though I have never watered it.  The  area to the left of a path is a bricked in area which could become another garden area if I pull the grass out.

These last two picture represent the areas I have for relatively immediate future expansion.  The one on top is directly to the left of the garden area in the first picture (again, I would need to uproot the grass.  The bottom picture is looking off our (cracked) back pad towards the corner.  My thought would be potential beds (the slope is just enough and our downpours are just regular enough that I just cannot rip the soil off - it will degrade pretty rapidly.

My thought is that I have enough room now for whatever garden I might to have, although I really think I will have to use it all to do what I would like to do in terms of food production - which will require some amount of expenditure.

Water is the other issue, of course.  Right now it is all manual.  There is a way (I think)  that I could pipe it along the fence line and hit the whole garden area (which would be great and money saving - water is a bit of a problem where I live).  

I think my goal for this year is to dig out the bricked in area and move to the edge of the tree line (I visions of needed some grass area for the quail, who love to run in the garden and hay:

As always, that is the plan - but there is always next season...