Part 4 of 4: This Year's Goals and Pictures of My Garden

My plans for this summer are to make my keyhole beds more defined and to continue building them up with organic matter. To assist this I want to make more cement paver stones to finish out the outlining of the beds. I am excited to see how well my comfrey does and I am getting impatient to add it to my mulches. I also plan to buy some white clover for a general ground cover because it is low growing, tolerates cutting if need be, and is a good dynamic accumulator. I think it is important to add more garlic and onion and I want to get some marigolds going, which keep failing from seed, so I will probably buy some of these plants to get them going.  The marigolds, onions, and garlic will act as general pest detractors; I will keep my eye out for other odoriferous/strong smelling plants. I will keep researching about building soil fertility and may find some other plants I wish to add to aid in this effort. I also want to research nectary plants to act as an attractor for beneficial insects like lady bugs; insects that act as predators to other pest bugs like aphids. Another goal of mine, more long term, is to plant more items from direct seeding into the ground. Paul Wheaton also made a good argument about transplanting plants means the plants will not have a taproot because it is highly sensitive and is always killed in the transplanting process; I cannot remember the exact podcast but I am sure if you search the archives at the link for the soil health podcast then you can find it along with seeing all his other wealth of information.  Finally I want to figure out how to construct mini swales and integrate some huglekultur into my layout. I will keep you posted on how my garden develops. For now, here is an article that discusses hugle culture http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/.

The picture below is a sketch of my L-shaped garden space. Each square represents 4 square feet or 2'x2'.  

The picture below is of the entrance to my garden. The purple plum with the green leafed plum and apricot growing underneath are in the foreground on the top, left corner. The middle section shows my makeshift arbor; a carport put up originally to serve as a greenhouse but I used as an arbor instead. On the right side of the arbor is the wire fence I attached for vining plants (grapes and kiwis will be trained up and accross and I want some others like peas or something on the fence). The paver stones are my primitive start to laying out key hole beds. As you can see the grasses and weeds are clipped low but are left to cover the bare dirt. At the end of the arbor is one of my volunteer trees (I believe is a plum). In the background behind the arbor but inside the fence are my volunteer trees: to the left are my other two volunteer trees, my apple is in the middle but hidden behind the volunteer tree under the arbor, and the peach on the right. Directly behind those trees and the fence is the grove of trees behind our property (some of those trees are cotton wood trees).

The next two pictures sort of show the plight of the stressed tree trying to reach the sun while the apricot has successfully reached it.

The next picture is a better view of my peach and apple trees with a back view of the arbor. The peach is on the left with a walnut tree touching it (apparently the walnut want to join this garden because he was 4' away last year) and the apple is on the right.