Design

The raised beds in front (of our house in the mountains) are looking good. The last sugar snap peas are giving way to tomatoes and pole beans (greasy cut beans - an Southern Appalachian heirloom bean and yard-long beans - the Asian version (twining) of our southern cowpea -- but much better in my opinion. I harvested bunches of beets, carrots, and onions from the raised beds this afternoon -- they'll be tasty roasted for tomorrow's dinner.  (And I'm thinking I need to head down to our Piedmont vegetable garden to harvest the rest of the garlic, maybe most of the onions, and check the potatoes.) A new red potato popped up when I was checking some "leftover" plants that I'd stuck in a corner here in the mountains. What fun!

The two raised beds below the house turned into three, with 'leftover' stone and soil. The third is just to the right of the deck, barely visible in this photo. The view from above. And from below. I tucked the rest of the leek seedlings and lettuce into one bed, and sowed mesclun mix, radishes, and arugula in another. They're placeholder crops, and probably won't amount to much without frequent watering. There isn't rain in the forecast this week, so I hope that the rich organic soil will hold moisture well. But experiments are fun.