Thursday, October 16, 2008

Tropical Vegetable Garden - Phase 2

Worked in the bed for a couple of hours today. Weeded and dug out wedelia for almost an hour. I know I didn't get it all, and some will probably come back up, but at least it's under control for now. I hope that the perennial peanut will take off now that it isn't competing with all those weeds.

I dug up and gave away the Brugmansia that had never done well there, and some Allamanda shoots that will probably never stop coming up. In trying to figure out how to plant things so that they would get enough water (the lot slopes down to the front and the side on this side of the house), I decided to terrace the top part of the garden. I managed to find a few mis-matched but useable landscape edge blocks. I'll fix the mismatched part later, just wanted to see how it would do.

I was going to put the milk and wine crinums there, but opted for the Ice Cream Bananas and one Dwarf Cavendish on the end instead. I figured that having those there would keep the water from running down and out of that part of the garden. Planted them in the free compost we got from the city park yesterday. This compost was better than what is normally there, and had some shell mixed in, which will add calcium to the soil. Watered in well, and mulched, of course.

Next step will be to finish clearing out all the weeds and put down mulch and stepping stones on the walkway. I'm going to be calling tree trimming companies tomorrow to see if I can get a load of free chips from one of them.

So here are the pictures of phase 2. The bananas will act as a screen from the road as well. Of course, they are tiny now, but they grow very quickly, and put up lots of pups, so by next year this time, it will be all screened in.

From the front


From the Side



2 comments:

Leasmom said...

Nicely done!!!

Florida Homesteader said...

Thanks, Patrice. Still a lot to do, but it's getting there.