Thursday, September 11, 2008

Sala Bowl Garden - Summer Edition



The nights are cooling down here in Davis. Which really only means that we can keep the windows open at night and not suffocate in the heat. Ha!



And the summer edition of the salad bowl garden is in full swing, almost done actually. Back in spring we ripped out the winter crops and planted the six beds with summer crops.



The smallest beds nearest the building were planted with several types of basil and peppers:



We re-used the trellises from the last garden as support for the peppers. Here are the small plots now:



Woah! You can see why we needed to do some pruning/harvesting.

The middle beds were planted with pole beans on trellises, bush beans, cucumbers, and greens.

Then:



Now:



But greens during the summer? How? Mags showed us this great little trellis idea - growing the cucumber vines in an arc to provide shade for cool-season greens!



It worked like a charm:



In the biggest beds (the ones with paths) we planted different kinds of tomatoes. Then:



Now:



The tomatoes are going strong right now, along with the peppers. The beans and basil are almost done though, so another month more and we should be pulling it all out to plant the next crop!

This round we also had to do something to solve the problem of soil runoff into the path. So we got extra funding to buy bender board for the biggest beds. We stained them dark brown and installed them around the edges of the biggest beds:



Some stakes and screws and a few hours of work was all it took, and it looks and works great!

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