Allan Family Garden

Construction Complete: Harvest Tour

2009-09-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

We finished the hardscaping last weekend... 12 months and 2 weeks since we moved the first shovel of dirt, but who's counting!!! Let's begin the tour after a nice end-of-summer rain.

The big picture:

Top-of-ladder view (click to enlarge):

Our new pets, the baby koi trio. I especially like the one with the red dot on the head, it's supposed to symbolize the rising sun and looks like a crane (all Japanese symbolism):

Here's the rain barrel I built out of an old wine barrel. It collects all the rain from the front half of our roof, and gives me plenty of water to satisfy all our potted plants.

I completed the saloon-style gates on the arbor (they swing both in and out). And the angle of the "Z" support, again, matches the angle of the peak of the arbor and roof.The grape took over! We can't wait 'til it fruits next year!

Here are the other two gates, one leading to the driveway (where our car is being rain-washed) and one to the tiny side-yard of our house.

Here's a close up of one of the post caps. We didn't make them ourselves, but what a find! They are made out of red stained glass, and it really picks up the red in the frog fountain and the front door.

And of course, THE PLANTS...

What's under the cloche? A delicious crop of peppers and watermelons gone wild (with some neighboring melons and cucumbers also taking over)...

If you can't tell, we're very happy with our watermelons. We've harvested about eight and there's at least four more on the vines. A delicious accomplishment given our cool climate.

This bed has some young onions poking up next to our Leaning Trellis of Beansa (they are cranberry beans for drying, kinda like kidney beans). You can see some of our drip tubing laying in the bed.

Our six-variety espalier (espalier basically means trained flat and horizontal) apple tree with one lone apple on it. Each branch is a different variety of apple and is grafted onto the trunk. We're hoping for a nice and varied crop next year!!!

This bed has lettuces, cucumbers, broccoli, cherentais melons (basically really yummy cantaloupe), and corn. Our cool-weather corn was confused by our streak of over 100 degree days, but we had a few good ears.

Here are the blackberries (boysenberry and marionberry) I'm training along the side of the yard. Can't wait for the fruit next year.

This bed has lots of turnips, carrots, cabbage, and lettuces. Turnips are no longer peasant food! They're great roasted with beets, potatoes, garlic and olive oil!

Here you can see one of our peach trees being trained in a fan shape. It's a white peach. Behind that cedar box is the spigot, watering timer and filters. Look at all the strawberries underneath, next spring will be crazy!

Looking through the arbor to the front porch. The grape leaves are hiding the two cherry trees a bit. I know I keep saying this, but again I can't wait! I can't wait to see them in bloom in the spring!!! The border of lavender attracts so many bees, it smells great (even to me), and it has filled in very well. And, of course our front door really pops now.

That's the end of the end-of-summer 2009 tour.

Progress with the Fence, Arbor and Front Door

2009-08-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's been three months since the last post and we've been enjoying the garden produce, but not doing much work on the hardscaping until now.We installed the rails on the fence posts. Then, I custom cut each picket. the triangular top of each picket matches the peak of the roof, so it really ties in well. We decided on alternating fat and skinny, but against installing a handrail on top for simplicity. Mike attached most of the pickets to exacting standards.

I also recently put the arbor together. I was very nervous that the triangular peak just wouldn't look good, and it was terribly difficult to get all the angles and measurements right.

It may not be so obvious,but we replaced our front door and it really improved the livability. The red door pops, it has windows along the top that let in more light into the living room, and we removed the cage-like security door. In it's place there is a retractable screen door. It rolls up so you can't see it and it doesn't obscure the front door. And when you want a breeze and an unobstructed view, you can slide the screen across the opening. It really makes the front garden a room.

After a very busy weekend, we're ALMOST finished... No gates or post tops. The arbor fits so well, we couldn't be more pleased!

The Planting is Complete!!! (For Now)

2009-05-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

In the past month we've been busy. I dug out all the post holes by hand and set the fence posts. We planted almost all of our perennial food plants and put down a nice mulch covering. In all of the borders, we have four different varieties of strawberries (that's about 200 square feet of strawberries!!!). In the border near the house, I will have a six-variety espalier apple tree and two espalier peach trees. In front of the porch is a small lavender hedge and a cherry tree on either side. On the side borders are black raspberries and blackberries. In the front border are blueberries and grapes that will be trained up the arbor. Under the trees in the parking strip we have an herb garden, about two dozen varieties of perennial herbs.

And of course, the water feature came together!!! It only took about nine months of pondering before we made a decision, but the result just fits so well. I found a pot with four frogs along the rim facing the center at Portland Nursery. I drilled out their mouths, installed the copper plumbing, hooked up a pump, and it's a fountain! The four frogs mirror the four corners, it's not too high to block the view of the door, and the pot color will fit right in when we paint the door!!! And don't those two Ikea chairs just make the porch so inviting!

Yeah!!!

After Winter Break

2009-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

It may not be obvious, but we've been busy these past three months. Our driveway is dirt-free, thank you Craigslist! We waited for the soil to dry out some before working in the amendments in the border beds and parking strip (compost and lime, and for our acid-loving blueberries, some peat moss). We've been picking out all of our perennial food plants for the border beds and parking strip. Obviously, we've gotten a few bare root trees already into the parking strip. There are four different dwarf apple trees, a dwarf pear tree and a dwarf plum tree.

We've also been trying to decide on a design for the fence, so I've been playing with Photoshop. Right now, I'm thinking of a code-compliant 3.5 foot tall cedar fence with alternating skinny and fat pickets and topped with a hand rail for a more finished look. I haven't decided on an arbor over the entrance, but I think it would be great if I could make a triangular arbor that matched the peak of the roof. I never thought it would be eight months later and still the project is not complete!!!

Planning for the Spring

2009-02-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

It's almost been two months since my last update. The Christmas snow and cold spell killed off our tender lettuces and some of our fall broccoli, but everything else survived nicely. We've had a great supply for our salads and some roots for our stews. And, we've been planning...

This is Mike's plan for our raised beds. We'll probably still tweak it slightly. It's actually pretty hard to plan the layout of the plants when you are four season gardening. You have to pay attention not only to the growing habit, but also the time until harvest to make sure that you'll be able to fill in the spot before winter. I'm excited about keeping the peppers and watermelons under the cloche all summer, they'll love the extra heat and I have high hopes!

Update!

2008-11-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

It's been two months. We forgot to take pictures and update everyone on our progress along the way.

Not too much has happened except that the paving is now complete and the plants have grown quite a bit!!! I spent a solid five days fitting together a puzzle of paving stones. My daily routine was to crank up the radio (OPB), lay out a bunch of stones the sidewalk, then wander around finding the perfect piece, the path would slowly fill in around each bed, then sweep the gravel into the cracks, clear all the stones off the sidewalk for the night, and get a big pat on the back from Mike when he comes home from work. I decided to scatter the remaining purple stones kind of like stepping stones in the path.

Now that winter and rains are on their way, I put up cloches (French for bell, since plants were often covered with glass bells to protect them from frost) over the back two beds. Some bent PVC pipes and some plastic sheeting clipped on gives you a cheap greenhouse. Of course, this warms the bed up, but perhaps more importantly in Portland, it keeps the plants dry from the constant winter drizzle.

Planting Time!!!

2008-08-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

We didn't want to miss out on the fall plating season, so we ordered some mushroom compost which was (guess what?) piled in the driveway. There is so much dirt there!!! But we mixed the compost into some of our scraped-off topsoil, cleard off some of the driveway, and filled up our beds. Here's Mike planting our fall veggies: broccoli, cabbage, onions, swiss chard, kale, miner's lettuce, corn salad, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuces, and spinach. In a few weeks, we plan on planting our garlic, elephant garlic, and shallots. You may see near the house that we saved some tomatoes, corn and potatoes from the tiller.

Aside from choosing a few special stone pavers, like the one for the entrance, we haven't made much progress in the past two weeks except the beds. I didn't think it would be this much work!!!

Water Feature Progress

2008-08-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've been busy working on the water feature, but haven't made much progress elsewhere.We needed to slow down to let the design come into focus. We decided on a border of purple bluestone around the pool and have some colorful gravel that ties the blue and purple stone together well.

It's coming together!

Water Feature Frustration

2008-08-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

This past week has been frustrating. We had to remove more dirt both to allow enough depth for the gravel base for the paving stone and to fine tune the slope. There's hardly enough room in our driveway for the stone, the dirt, and a narrow path to our kitchen door. I can't stand all that dirt being tracked in, we need to fill up those beds!

While it's nice to see the pathways more clearly defined, we've been searching online and visiting every nursery in the Portland Metro area for a fountain, pond, bubbling rock, bamboo contraption, or overflowing pot. While we still don't know exactly what we want, we decided to go custom and make a diamond-shaped pool that extends above ground. Maybe it will stay as a pool, maybe we'll add a water spitter of some kind, I don't know. But we found some bluestone in brick-sized shapes at a different stone yard that I hope will look good.

Playing in the Dirt

2008-07-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

The yard is pretty much graded now, though our driveway is now covered with a gigantic heap of dirt. And our paving stone has been delivered! Best part is that we found some bluestone in a purple color, Mike's favorite!!! That pretty much sold us over crushed gravel, wood chips, or other flagstones.

I built all four raised beds in a day, which was pretty satisfying. They are built out of cedar 2x6's screwed to 4x4 posts - no treated lumber here! You can tell that the garden is sloped since the two beds in the back are a little higher, but our trusty level has our beds perfectly plumb.

Mike took charge of plumbing our irrigation system. We used PVC pipe and didn't worry about burying it too far down since the ground rarely freezes and we can easily drain the system since it's on a slope.

Each raised bed and each border bed has a valve so that we can control the watering a little bit. It's too expensive to have separate timers and electric-powered valves. You can also see how we marked out the border beds with stake and string.

We are getting sick of the dirt!

Construction, I mean Destruction Begins!

2008-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I tore out the front cement walkway with an electric jack hammer. Not very fun especially since the first one I rented started smoking, but it was easier than using a sledge hammer. Here's our stack of concrete:

But the real fun began on the weekend. First we rented a sod cutter to remove the grass, then we rented this gigantic tiller:

We needed to break up our dry soil that's been baking in the July sun, so that it is easier to work in, but also because we need to remove quite a bit of dirt because our front yard needs to be regraded with a slope away from the house. While I wrestled the 800 pound beast, Mike had the not so fun job of removing our now huge foundation plantings and their roots.

Now there's only about a ton of dusty, dry dirt to pile up on the driveway!

Design Ideas

2008-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here's what Mike and I have to work with, a picture from our home when we bought it in 2002. We haven't done very much with the front yard, so it pretty much looks the same except the foundation plantings have filled in quite a bit since then.

I've been working on a design with Mike and came up with a drawing, with lots of notes in the margins...

The top indentation is our porch with one step, the bottom rectangle is our parking strip and above that the sidewalk. I'm thinking of border plantings two to three feet wide, four raised beds, and a water feature in the middle. The red line would be a fence and the green lines are the underground plumbing for the drip irrigation. And all around it are my measurements and calculations. While it is not perfectly symmetrical, it's not hard to see the Western formal garden design!

I've also been searching the internet for inspiration and put together a design collage...

Here you can see all my thoughts for the garden: raised beds, picket fences, an arbor in the front and center (maybe triangular to match our home's peak), bluestone for paving, some sort of water feature and I would like to paint our front door, though I don't know which of these colors I like best. I already know I want to paint our porch pillars brown to match the trim instead of that ugly maroon, so I Photoshop'ed our home.

Anyways, I hope these ideas will guide us!

In the Beginning...

2008-07-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

My idea to turn our front yard into a garden really sprang from our frustration that we don't have enough room to grow food. And, since it will be a while before we can afford a farm, it only makes sense to use the land that we have right now. Since our back yard is pretty much maxed out, that leaves the front. Our front yard is almost 1,000 square feet of prime garden space: South-facing and full-sun.

I've been reading a lot of books on history of gardens. In a very brief nutshell, formal Western gardens (not the landscaping movement that began within the past few centuries) are said to be based on the Garden of Eden. According to the Book of Genesis, a river flowed into the garden and split into four. So, Western formal gardens often had a central fountain, pond, or pool with four arms or paths radiating out. This style is most easily traced back to Persia, but could be found all over the Mediterranean and thrived through the dark ages in monasteries, medieval times, and the Renaissance (and the symbolism kept piling on, too). Today, we know it best as a French kitchen garden, or Potager

Here's a picture of a random existing Persian Garden:

And a picture of the archetypal French potager, the gardens at the Château de Villandry:

I like a design with dep roots in history, so I think I'll go with a design with a central water feature, that's symmetrical and has sharply defined borders, and raised beds (which have many advantages, not to mention they've have been used for millenia). The other option I'm considering is a more of a wild cottage garden, less hardscaping and more wandering paths.