I decided to share with you our backyard garden;we built ourselves, two pairs of hands and legs.Yes, legs were very much involved as well. Believe me I got few bruises myself. We are in the middle of July and now after all the hard, sweaty and very very labor intensive work it is the time to enjoy the delights she brings us every single day. Below I prepared a little photo tour of the the building process.We built a raised bed garden 32ft(9.8m) x20ft(6m).
In case you are wondering about he name, well let me fill you on that too. Morning Sunshine…that’s me.;-) I’m up early and I’m pretty much a morning person. Piggie’s Delight is my other half, he says the best dessert is the pork and that we should have raised a pig in there, and on top of that he doesn’t eat vegetables much, yet he designed and cares for our garden every day. So that is how the garden name came to life as:
“Morning Sunshine and Piggie’s Delight “.
Enjoy.
March
Each piece of wood was treated with an outdoor wood protector.
Delivery of the 1st soil was a painful experience, first truck got stuck on the lawn and wasn’t able to move at all, secondly, soil in the back of the truck was stuck so what you see above was manually shoveled out of the back of the truck and then again moved to the garden site using wheelbarrows. I was beyond exhausted that day.
I should add that our neighbor Jeff … early in the morning he was walking down from the post office and we were waiting for the 1st soil delivery , Jeff stopped by…didn’t leave until later that afternoon. He helped us so much that day. Thank you Jeff.
We put organic compost, mushroom soil and top soil in our garden.
I kept count using small stones, you’ll count 13 small batches, 13 times 10, that’s 130 wheelbarrows. We also had mushroom and top soil delivered, that I didn’t take any pictures of. As much as I enjoy documenting everything I think I got to the point where it didn’t matter, I just wanted to get it done, picture or not.
Total we used 230 wheelbarrow of soil to fill the raised bed.
Our 20(6m) feet wide and 32(9.8m) feet long garden took us 2 months to built, she produced lots of sweat, many many hours spent in Home Depot or Lowes, lots of 2 by 4s loaded into the truck, lots of screws, bolts, washers, we spent approximately 1500 cable ties to secure fencing and roof netting.
Soil is in, Hurray !!
All smoothed out. My arms are hurting, can’t feel a thing, but it is done. Let’s Celebrate!
Okay, now we are off to put up the green fencing. We have plentiful deer in the area so this was pretty much necessary.
~ April ~
Now it was time to make the garden pathways using the stone, lots of it.
First Stone is in !
Garden is deer and bird proof. We put a green fencing up and actually we have 2 netted roofs, one though effective for larger birds still not small enough for small ones, small birds were attacking our strawberries with a strong force so we hand to get a netting with smaller holes, it took us 4 days to make it, you wouldn’t believe what we went through to get it done. We bought one roll of bird netting , we could have bought a large netting on ebay, but they were just waaaaaaay too expensive. So using a fishing nylon and on all fours on our lawn we sewed it together to make a large enough netting to cover the whole garden and more.
When I look back at things we have done it seems impossible for 2 people to do it all, but with the determination it can be done.
Also there are 2 support beams in the structure of the garden, just to be on the safe side that it is not going to collapse on us.
Bellow you can see the first netting, that at the end was not effective and small birds still got in and were damaging our crops, we bought that on ebay, leftovers were used to build a climbing wall for our beans.
At this stage, things were getting close to the planning time, we started several seedlings inside and some we bought at a local nursery/farm.
We planted : strawberries, broccoli, radishes, 2 kinds of peppers, 3 kinds of summer zucchinis, 3 kind of winter squash, cantaloupe, 44 tomato plants, 62 cucumber plants, kohlrabi, basil, 4 kinds of beans, carrots, brusell sprouts.
Strawberries and Broccoli – just planted.
~ May ~
Broccoli
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Radishes
Beans
Garden Fresh Broccoli is so tasty and really tender. We will plant broccoli again in fall.
Our Good Luck Garden Dwarf
Cucumbers
Basil
Garden Predator
My Petunia Flowers
Cosmos
Cool Looking Worm
~ June ~
Zucchinis
Cantaloupe
Beans
Tomatoes
Peppers
We planted Peppers in June, rather late, they replaced radishes. We will plant radishes again in the fall.
Strawberries
Cucumbers
Hydrangea
She is Beautiful
July
In July things started to move quickly, everything is growing rapidly, we’ve been harvesting lots of beans, and just a few days ago we picked first cherry tomatoes. Zucchinis are proving to be abundant this year as well. Strawberries we planted have grown sufficiently since April, and every day I pick about a handful or so.
I’ve been cooking lots of vegetable dishes, soups and been doing lots of grilling. I love veggies on the grill. Mostly I’m enjoying being able to see how everything grows and turns itself into a fruit /crop. I checked on carrots they are looking great too. We had the first kohlrabi, tender and juicy. Tomatoes have grown so much, we had to install a new extension for them to grow on, they are ranging from 7ft(2m) to 10ft (3m) tall and still growing.
The tallest variety is “sweet100”, at 10ft )3m), doing great and producing lots of tasty cherry tomatoes.
Enjoy.
Tomatoes
Tomato : “I’m unique I grow Upside Down.”
Kohlerabi
Strawberries
Beans
Picking the Beans
Bean : “Hi, I’m Curly”.
Cucumbers
Peppers
Zucchinis / Winter Squash
Winter Squash has traveled all the way from the middle of the garden to the fence.
2 out of 3 varieties of Zucchinis :
-Sweet Gourmet Hybrid/lighter skin/
-Sure Thing Hybrid/dark green skin/.
Sweet Gourmet hybrid has proved to be absolutely delicious. I used it to make a zucchini soup, delicious. Despite the large size it retained the buttery texture. So so good.
Sure Thing Hybrid has a wonderful property of not getting too mushy, I used it to make stuffed zucchinis, and on the grill, or sauteed in the skillet.
Stuffed Grilled Zucchini
Zucchini Soup
In the midst of our garden flourishing my flowers are in bloom as well
That’s our garden ” MORNING SUNSHINE AND PIGGIE’S DELIGHT ”
This post was planned for the weekend but since you overwhelmed me with your requests.Here it is. Pumpkin Spice Meringue Cake, filled with delicious chocolate ganache and fresh cinnamon cream filling. I hope you don’t get bored of meringue cakes because I have another one coming. I love making them. Pumpkin Spice Meringue Cake with…
Let’s surprise mom with something special today. How about Meringue Sunflowers? I always seem to have extra egg whites in the fridge. You see one of my favorite things of my childhood was and undeniable still is freshly whipped meringue. I used to help my mom as a kid, especially on…
These pumpkin hand pies were delicious and they deserve a spot on your Thanksgiving table. Pumpkin Orange Chocolate Hand Pies Pie Dough 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2tsp salt 1tbl sugar 2sticks cold butter, cut up into chunks 1/4cup chilled milk or water 1tsp apple cider vinegar zest of one lemon…
Raspberry Lemon Thumbprint Cookies Why not recycling Peanut Butter Jars into Festive Cookie Jars. If you save your Peanut Butter jars during the year you can recycle them into festive cookie jars for Holidays They make for a cute cookie gift for a friend, piano teacher, your mail man or a neighbor, plus they…
Last week I shared with a super easy and delicious recipe for Apple Caramel Cupcakes from The Happy Everything Cookbook and today I wanted to share with you another recipe from this cookbook. I was drawn to this recipe from the first time I flipped through the pages of the cookbook. It has some of…
11 Comments
Awesome very good detailed pics & instructions. It’s pretty worth enough for me. yard maintenance
I am speechless…your garden is absolutely amazing. I enjoyed seeing the whole progress. Everthing looks so yummy. Now you can open your own Fruit & Vegetable Stand on your street!
Oh Hani!! How beautiful! Your cookies just show how beautiful the rest of the things in your life are. I would be so ashamed to show you the pictures of our garden!! This is inspiring! thank you for sharing!!!!!!! i love it! thank you for taking your time to document it!
Glory, thanks for stopping by, I'm glad you enjoyed the tour.It is a lot of work and finally it is paying off.
Jenn, you can email me I can put an approximate sheet together,no problem.Can't wait to see what you'll guys do.
Tracy, thank you for your support, I've been documenting almost every single step we took, it is hard to do so, but I've tried to do my best.Glad you like it.
Faithy, you made me laugh, I'm so scared of spiders, been fighting that fear from childhood, believe me I was thinking of running too.;-)
Laurie, thanks for stopping by, I agree home grown is the best.
I'm so impressed! I can't imagine you built this garden on your own, just the 2 of you! so awesome! such wonderful garden and lovely photos! you managed to capture all the garden predator and worm so well!.. I'm hopeless, if it was me, i would run a mile seeing any insect/worms.. lol!
This was such a treat to see, Hani! Your garden is just wonderful and thank you for showing us with your amazing photography the transformation that occurred. I just loved seeing this and it brought such a smile to my face!
What a Beautiful garden! My husband and I sold our home recently (and our garden 🙁 Our new home is infested with deer as well. So I was curious if you wouldn't mind sharing with me the approximate cost we will incur next year when we have to build that type of enclosed area, ourselves. If you're willing to share I would GREATly appreciate it. If not, know that your garden is beautiful and you have me jealous this year!
Oh Haniela, I enjoyed that tour so much!! You can really see all of the love (and work!!) that went into it all!! It is one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen!!
Thank you Bea. I was just talking with a friend about zucchini blossoms, and I'll be making some. I can't wait to see what they taste like.Oooh I love the sound of that bechamel sauce. Thank you for Bea.
Oh, Hani! You did a wonderful work of love with your garden… I love to see your veggies growing and if they taste as good as they look, you'll enjoy many meals… In Mexico we eat zucchini flowers (we eat a lot of flowers!) they are tasty and you can make soup or cream, or add to creamy bechamel sauce and top pork or chicken with it… we use them to stuff quesadillas, chicken or pork… just looking at yours made my mouth water 🙂
Awesome very good detailed pics & instructions. It’s pretty worth enough for me. yard maintenance
Hana & Rado,
I am speechless…your garden is absolutely amazing. I enjoyed seeing the whole progress. Everthing looks so yummy. Now you can open your own Fruit & Vegetable Stand on your street!
See you soon,
Terri & Paul
Oh Hani!! How beautiful! Your cookies just show how beautiful the rest of the things in your life are. I would be so ashamed to show you the pictures of our garden!! This is inspiring! thank you for sharing!!!!!!! i love it! thank you for taking your time to document it!
Glory, thanks for stopping by, I'm glad you enjoyed the tour.It is a lot of work and finally it is paying off.
Jenn, you can email me I can put an approximate sheet together,no problem.Can't wait to see what you'll guys do.
Tracy, thank you for your support, I've been documenting almost every single step we took, it is hard to do so, but I've tried to do my best.Glad you like it.
Faithy, you made me laugh, I'm so scared of spiders, been fighting that fear from childhood, believe me I was thinking of running too.;-)
Laurie, thanks for stopping by, I agree home grown is the best.
What a beautiful garden!! You can really see through your pics how much love you both put into it!! There really is nothing better than home grown!!
I'm so impressed! I can't imagine you built this garden on your own, just the 2 of you! so awesome! such wonderful garden and lovely photos! you managed to capture all the garden predator and worm so well!.. I'm hopeless, if it was me, i would run a mile seeing any insect/worms.. lol!
This was such a treat to see, Hani! Your garden is just wonderful and thank you for showing us with your amazing photography the transformation that occurred. I just loved seeing this and it brought such a smile to my face!
What a Beautiful garden! My husband and I sold our home recently (and our garden 🙁 Our new home is infested with deer as well. So I was curious if you wouldn't mind sharing with me the approximate cost we will incur next year when we have to build that type of enclosed area, ourselves. If you're willing to share I would GREATly appreciate it. If not, know that your garden is beautiful and you have me jealous this year!
Oh Haniela, I enjoyed that tour so much!! You can really see all of the love (and work!!) that went into it all!! It is one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen!!
Thank you Bea. I was just talking with a friend about zucchini blossoms, and I'll be making some. I can't wait to see what they taste like.Oooh I love the sound of that bechamel sauce. Thank you for Bea.
Oh, Hani! You did a wonderful work of love with your garden… I love to see your veggies growing and if they taste as good as they look, you'll enjoy many meals… In Mexico we eat zucchini flowers (we eat a lot of flowers!) they are tasty and you can make soup or cream, or add to creamy bechamel sauce and top pork or chicken with it… we use them to stuff quesadillas, chicken or pork… just looking at yours made my mouth water 🙂