Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I made a major change to my garden this year - took out half of it because one side of the yard was just too much upkeep. I'm half embarrased and half proud to show the following before and after pics. My excuse is last fall I had a 9 month old baby so I couldn't clean up the garden, and that's how it got so bad.

The side I replaced with grass seed before:


And after:

Is that an amazing transformation or what?! I can't believe one little bag of grass seed worked that well in just 1 month.

Here's the other side of the garden that I kept, before:


And after:


I've got a bunch of herbs, blue lake pole beans, 6 yellow frying peppers, 4 Empress of India nasturtiums, Rocky cucumbers, 4 jalapenos, calendula, marigolds, bergamot, hollyhocks, strawberries, 1 cherry tomato, 3 Ichiban eggplants, cavili & black beauty squash, garden soy beans, & basil. So far everything is doing well except the soybeans and nasturtiums - I direct seeded them but nothing has sprouted yet. They were old seeds so I figure that might be why.

Your garden is gorgeous! I love the little pathway inside.

Cute garden!! :)

Thanks you two!

I set fireworks off in the garden on Wednesday. I did it because it is fenced in, so that kept the toddlers far away. It was just large morning glory sparklers and some disco flashers, but it was pretty awesome! Somehow it was all that more special because it happened in my beloved little garden.

Great job!

Just look at all the berries on my blackberry bush!



I am so excited because the last two summers it was like this and we were struck with triple digit heatwaves just as they were about to turn purple, and they all shriveled instantly to brown yuck.

So last Saturday it reached 101, and I got a little creative with a shade cloth - my old patio umbrella haha!



Worked like a charm - they started turning purple two days ago. Wuhoo!

Gophergeddon struck last night! Damn thing ate about 1/3 of my green beans, 1 entire squash plant, and 2/3 of my cucumbers. Super sad face!!

I knew my neighbors had a human trap from when this happened last year, so my partner went next door to ask them to borrow it. Turns out they already put it out this morning - stupid gopher ate up their garden last night too!

I also got a solar powered sonic thingamajig that is supposed to scare them away at lowe's today.

I really, really hope the trap/sonic thing work - my green beans were looking so lush and I was really looking forward to getting some this year!!

On the upside, I gave away five big containers of blackberries at work the other day. People were delighted.

The sonic spike didn't work. Damn gopher ate another 1/3 of my beans. So FYI, don't waste your money on this thing:

Wait wait! Turns out it may have worked after all. I read somewhere it could take 2 weeks to take effect, and sure enough the gopher has not come back since my last post, although it has been in my neighbors garden.

The green beans grew back and I finally picked exactly 12 of them this week haha. There are more on the vine now, so I'm hoping to get a good amount over the next week or two.

This is my garden just last Saturday. Looking pretty good after the blazing hot June/July we had and gophergeddon!
Clockwise from the left: green beans & italian peppers, jalapeno, garlic chives (white flowers) herbs behind that, a great big tomato, eggplants, arugula, brown patch where I just planted radish, mache & lettuce seeds for the fall, a small zucchini you can't see behind all that basil.

And the beautiful beans (I got 6 on Thurs and 6 more Fri, so these are the 1st 6).

very cute garden...!

Wow, everything's looking great! Glad to see you are getting some harvest. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to stop the roaches, rats, slugs, snails, and in your case, gophers!--from eating the stuff!

Isn't it amazing how delicious green beans from the garden are? They are like tomatoes--a completely different thing from what you can buy in the stores.