My Expanding Edible Garden

Even though I’ve grumbled a bit over the summer about the amount of effort that has gone into my expanding edible garden, I am extremely grateful now that I have all the fruits of my labour to sustain me through the COVID-19 lockdown period. The pantry and freezer are filled to overflowing and still the harvest continues. My work from home outlook isn’t too bad either.

I thought I would share with you the changes that have happened since some of my previous posts. When I first started with my blog I posted on my Changing Garden and then Growing More Veggies in a Small Space where I expanded my veggie garden (considerably, I thought at the time). Later I posted on Planting a Home Orchard as I crammed more fruit trees into the garden borders. Then came Creating a Backyard Haven where I focused on the relaxing and entertaining aspects of the garden – which I am absolutely loving.

But of course I kept thinking about other things I’d like to grow but didn’t have room for. I started to think about things like crop rotation to keep my garden healthy – but there weren’t enough spaces to rotate between. I had always loved the flowing curves of the garden and the lawn that swept through and didn’t want to sacrifice that. But once I had had to square up some of the lines in order to put in my canopy over the outdoor living area I started to think a bit differently.

Perhaps I could pave a bit more of the space near the house to expand the ‘outdoor living’ feel and give room for more planter pots. To do that I would need to cut back into the slope and add some steps – and the simplest way to do that was with straight lines rather than curved ones. Then if I had several straight lines maybe putting in some raised garden beds would look okay as well. There was a patch of lawn that made sense to sacrifice that was next to the other beds and the shed so I measured it up and laid out what the new garden bed would look like. After a while I decided I could live with it and asked my friendly garden guy to turn it into reality.

It wasn’t too long before I started looking for even more spaces to further expand my edible garden. I had joyfully planted asparagus in my new garden bed and dutifully left it without picking for the first season to allow the root system to establish but the asparagus grew to 2 meters tall and shaded everything around it. And the globe artichokes leaves were still spreading out and smothering everything around them too.

I decided that I could better utilise an area that got too boggy in winter if I put raised beds there too (smaller ones). This would allow me to move the asparagus and artichokes to less prime positions that would hopefully curb their growth somewhat and even if it didn’t, they wouldn’t swamp other plants. I could also position an old half wine barrel at the end and try my hand at growing my own ginger as it likes part shade conditions. My trusty garden guy helped make this happen.

I had a good crop of artichokes in spring and even though I had to move all my previously well established asparagus (and resist the temptation to pick it for another year), the height of growth suggests it is not unhappy with its new home. I’m definitely looking forward to my asparagus harvest next spring.

I will share more about expanding my home orchard in another post. I always seem to be trying to fit in just one more type of product plant somewhere.