The Back Forty

This year I finally got around to putting in a vegetable garden. I affectionately refer to it as 'the back forty'. It is about 25' x 20'.  It's been years since I've had a garden and I was a bit apprehensive that I would be growing deer food. After a little thought and the hard work of my sister, We have a couple of gardens.

The back forty is all vegetables, the front 10 is mostly herbs with a few vegetables and sunflowers thrown in. 

I'll try to get out this weekend to get some better photos but for now here's a few to show the bounty! 

This first photo is my sister showing off the radish harvest. Man, those puppies where hot! I built the fence to keep the rabbits out. It took me almost a month. I could only work on it a couple of hours each weekend. LOTS of rocks. But it is finally done for now (I've got big plans). I left the fence posts high so I can use them for trellises in the future. This year we didn't plan at all so there are plants all over the place with nowhere to walk. We'll do better next season. 

We wanted to keep the garden close to the house so we didn't have to lug water too far. 

We have peas, cukes, beans, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, radish, cabbage, onions, carrots and leeks in the back forty. See what I mean by over-planting! So far, so good, but I've started to go vertical. The shot above was about a month ago. I'll get out this weekend to get some shots of the jungle as it is now! 

We planted the herbs in the front garden. We put it right over the septic tank, but I don't think that will be any problem (I hope!) 

Here's a shot of the sunflower that seems to have 7 blooms. I didn't know they would produce more than one blossom per plant. Go figure! This is the first time I've grown sunflowers and I must say that I think I'm hooked! They are very cool and very big flowers! 

I'm planning on planting many more sunflowers next year. I'll plant one with each row of veggies to help attract bees. They are bee magnets! Plus, with the cost of sunflower seeds, it will help save on the cost of keeping my bird feeders full! 

That's it for now. I hope to get out this weekend to get better pictures of both gardens. 

The heat wave hit here in Warrenton today. Almost 99 degrees with a heat index of 113. It's only day one and is supposed to last through Sunday. If you want to keep track of how hot it is here, click on my weather station. The link is on the right side of this blog, labeled "Old Waterloo Road". It shows you the data from my backyard weather station and updates about every 5 minutes.