All we need now is sunlight and water (and a bit of Miracle Gro) ... and the sit back and watch everything grow. With the final pepper in a large pot, the new and much improved Kersey Gardens 2013 is underway. Still bigger than Laura, Kerry and I can ever eat, it's still fun to share with my friends at work. Requests are still be accepted for this year.
This year's Kersey Garden (2013) features an entirely new look ... gone are the old two-by-four rectangular raised beds ... in are new, smaller, taller pepper raised beds, two smaller octagonal raised beds in the upper/main bed, a permanent raised bed for the pole bean tower, three octagonal raised beds in the lower garden for tomatoes and carrots and along the outside of the lower bed, a two-tiered raised bed with lettuce, corn, giant sunflowers, asparagus and two large square planters in each corner housing a tomato plant.
-- Kersey Gardens, 2013 (shot Sunday, May 26, 2013) --
In the lower garden, new "Huey, Duey and Louie" raised tomato beds - 12" high, octagonal, and lots of room. From east to west, this year's line-up features (from east to west) - Roma Tomatos (my personal favorite), Early Girl Tomatos, and a second Roma Tomato plant. Along the outside, the beds are lined with Burpee's Danvers Carrot seed tape. Along with the triple raise beds in the lower garden, a single raised bed greets visitors as they enter the garden with a Burpee's Better Boy tomato plant.
-- "Huey, Duey and Louie" Tomato beds, Along the fence, the new two-tiered bed with lettuce and corn in the lower tier and Super/Mammoth/Giant Sunflowers in the upper tier. (Shot Sunday, May 26, 2013) --
Replacing the triple rectangular beds, which were crammed with 8-10 pepper plants and/or three tomato plants ... four new 24" high raised beds (made from 4"x4"studs surrounded by cedar fence planks), each with a pair of pepper plants. This year, with the Van Leuven kin having moved on, the peppers beds are loaded with sweet belle peppers (Big Bertha, Giant Marconi, Red, Orange, Yellow and Green Sweet Belle).
New pepper-plant raised beds (shot Sunday, May 26, 2013)
That's not the only peppers growing in this year's garden. Along the sides, in the large pots - along the east fenced wall (feeding off the heat bouncing off the fence) is "Jose Jalepeno on a Steeek" row (you have to know comedian Jeff Dunham to understand). Along the west fence, a sweet and hot banana pepper (again, the need isn't as great with Van Leuven gone), a Burpee Red Bell sweet pepper, two giant Mucho Grande Jalepeno peppers, an Anaheim pepper plant and finally a patio tomato plant wedged up against the newly added aspargus bed.
New this year, along the back wall of the garden, a two-tiered raised bed, 12" wide. You can see in the lower tier, 8 romaine lettuce plants spaced evenly, paired up with Burpee's (new) raised bed corn which will fill in between the lettuce plants. In the upper tier, Giant/Mammoth and Super American Sunflowers. If we get just a bit lucky, these will grow anywhere from 12 to 15 feet high. Picture below was from 2008 when we last had sunflowers, and you can see that some of those easily topped 12 feet high.
Along with the two tiered raised bed along the back fence, we've added a pair of 7' long, 18" deep beds that house this year's great experiment - Jersey Green Asparagus. Ordered from Gurney's, we'll see in a few weeks how much these two-year old crowns will sprout and grow.
If you look closely you'll see the asparagus crowns in each of the raised beds. Buried about 18" deep, each of the crowns sits on a hill in the trench with the roots spreading out. These are two year crowns that should produce this year. Asparagus is a perennial, so we'll definitely see produce next year (shot Saturday, May 18, 2013).
For a sixth year, the potato "spud bags" are back, with good looking healthy sprouts (spud-lets) already coming up just two-weeks after planting. Last year's crop fell victim to grasshoppers chewing up the leaves. This year if that starts to happen, we're ready with a thin white netting that'll cover plants and the bags. The first three bags (closest) feature red potatos, the middle three bags have russet potatoes (great for baking), and the final two bags have German Butterball potatoes (great for homemade potato chips).
Yet to come in two large plastic tubs - a first attempt at sweet potatoes .
"Spud-Lets"
No, it's not Marcia, Jan and Cindy from the Brady Bunch ... instead, the three sisters is a planting technique (also known as "companion planting") developed by the native americans many years ago that features corn (in this case Peaches & Cream) in the center of a hill and around the outside. Different types of squashes, in our case crookneck squash, pumpkins and black beauty zucchini will grow around the ground, between the hills, providing a natural mulch to help hold back the weeds. Once the corn is about 6" tall, we'll plant pole bean seeds on the top of the hills which will then grow up the corn, strengthening the stalks in the wind. The beans also push nitrogen back in the soil, nitrogen that the corn desperately needs to grown tall.
Over the past three summers (while I was gone to Indianapolis), I've missed my garden almost (yes, I said, almost) as much as my family and my little girl. The two best times of every year, fantasy football draft season and garden planting season.
I'm always proud of the fact that everything I do in the yard, in the garden, is not done by anyone else - it's all built and done by me. Told my father last night as we were walking through the garden, that this garden has to be because of my grandfather's influence in me - my grampy was a gentlemen farmer from Iowa, who loved to build things. Guess that about sums up me and my garden !!!
Off we go ... bring on the water ... the weeds ... and hopefully the perfect 2013 garden.
