Sugar pumpkins planted in straw bales

I thought I posted a picture of this yesterday, but it looks as though I didn’t. As mentioned in an earlier post, I am doing a straw bale garden this year. I’m doing this, in part, to fill in an uneven area of the yard, an area where some day in the future I plan to do a pretty signficant garden expansion.  I chose squash as the plants to put in the bales because they need a lot of space and I don’t mind if they scramble all over the place after they tumble down the sides of the bales.

Potatoes, onions, and beets

In this photo, you can see how happy the plants are in the outdoor raised beds. This bed has a combination of onions, potatoes, and beets. I hadn’t originally planned to put potatoes in this bed, but I had a few extra La Ratte potatoes and decided to plant them down the center of the bed.

Beans planted in the asparagus bed

Oh, the sad asparagus bed. I’ve been having a tough time getting the asparagus bed established. Moles have infested this bed and I really don’t have a lot of healthy asparagus plants.  So, I decided to slightly repurpose the bed for the time being.  I’m leaving the few asparagus plants in place but I added a variety of bean plants (both bush and pole, hence the bean towers) to the bed. Prior to doing this, I spread out a castor oil-based mole repellent and it seems to have slowed them down a bit. Two of the bean varieties I’m planting (Etna and Speckled Cranberry) are good for dried beans that I can harvest and store for winter use. Planting more dried beans was one of my goals after last season.

Speaking of goals, for the last week I’ve continued my zen gardening practice of doing just a task or two a day and it is really working! I feel so much less stressed out now.

Sandy