setting up this year's garden

I love gardening, but I usually  just plant butterly plants etc. Last year I bought some trees from Zone10  Nursery in Miami and they are doing well. I have a mango, mulberry, pomegranate, star fruit and honey bell. I got one honey bell from the tree this year, a miniature star fruit, NO MANGOES at all because of the drought, and lots and lots of mulberries that I have to share with the birds. They did cost a lot to purchase and have delivered, but I thought it was the best idea to make sure the plants were accustomed to this area. I had to recently buy yet another banana plant because the last 3 I got refused to bear fruit and I am just not giving up.

In the past we have used my compost heap to amend the soil here to make the garden plots.  Last year we finally made some raised beds from discarded pallets, but did a poor job of it and they fell apart.

This year i had some bed slats that no one on FreeCycle wanted so i bought some Liquid Nails and some bracket like things and put them together. For $10 I got three 3'X3'X6" raised beds that are holding together nicely.

I have prided myself on having xyroscaped the entire yard for the past 10 years, but this year with the drought I was losing so many plants. the truth of the matter is that the city is putting sewers in my development (built in 1964 and still on septic, thank you very much) so my entire butterfly garden has been watered from the drain field all this time.  I took the grass out shortly after we purchased the house in 1999 because there were bugs killing off the grass and I didn't want to put chemicals down. 

Year after year I have added plants and checked to see what would grow in my yard. Mostly Plumbago, porter's weed. some tall plant with yellow flower and mexican petunias, but then I put in dune sunflower and it is all being taken over. there has been a drought since our wonderful wet season ended and all my plants were "mysteriously" dying.  I just figured out last week that it might just be the lack of water.  Now that there aren't 5 of us at the house any more, and my oldest showers at her boyfriend, and we don't do more than one load of  laundry each week and we have low flow shower heads and low flush toilets (if it's yellow let it mellow......) there just isn't much water getting to the plants. The Swale is totally torn up and I am losing well established plants to the construction and they think they are going to replace all that with grass.

With that in mind I started releveling the back yard which had been torn up pretty badly by three rowdy dogs that are no longer with us. But when I pulled out all the ferns that had grown up to the screened in enclosure and raked out most of the junk and cut back the dead traveler's palms in preparation for moving the new grass to the back yard, I discovered that I was again energized and felt like planting.

So i went to Home Depot late at night and began helping them by recovering dead and dying plants (til my daughter told me that was illegal) and I had several flats of flowers by then. I cleaned up another spot of the side yard and planted them there since we spend so much time on our back patio.

But then I decided that since my septic would be gone soon and my front yard would clearly need to be watered again, I checked my irrigation system. The gardener that my husband had hired while my son and I were living in South America (Uruguay) had run over about one sprinkler in each zone, and I had just given away most of my pvc and sprinkler stuff in a freecycle frenzy. but miraculously the one spot that I had been clearing and watering by hand had complete system.  

I planted the flowers and a sweet potato plant that I had rescued from the front yard. But then I built the garden beds and this year I actually bought the $1.35 top soil from Home Depot, 6 bags of seeds and three tomato plants.

In the remaining raised bed from last year that I had been using as my compost heap I planted a strip of beets and I already had potatoes growing there. I purchased some containers that were on sale and planted okra in them because okra seems picky. in the raised beds in the back yard I planted the corn, green beans and squash in square foot gardening style and mixed a bag of top soil with the sandy soil in my back yard for the cumbers.  The peas went the same place they were last year, against an old fence panel that we will attach string to for trellising, and some went in pots my daughter had found on the side of the road against an old picket fence panel we have placed against the screened in porch to keep the remaining dog in the actual back yard.

I over spent and have since looked at other people's frugal sites for gardening and am mostly ashamed. 

I think that all together I spent $15 on soil, $10 on the glue and brackets, $10 on the seeds.  I was extravagant on the pots and spent a total of $25 for them, but they are so pretty.  Since then, however I saw this one guy use the mayonaise tubs from restaurants (I know how to get those) for his tomatoes.  I bet those are going to grow incredibly well because of the depth.  Mine are in reclaimed landscaping plastics that can be found all over the side of the road on trash day.

The pretty pots are where the neighbors can see them, and the pretty ones my daughter found are by the picket fence.  If all the food grows and I have had the experience that it will, I will have more than $60 worth of vegetables that will produce for the next 6 months. All the peas and the cucumbers have sprouted already (4 days) but I don't see any of the corn or squash.  all of the beets have sprouted. I almost think I should move the potatoes to give them more room, but I don't think they transplant well.

I purchased an organic pest control that will attach to my hose since all of my spray pumps died. ($10) and I did spend $29 on the banana plant, but it is supposed to produce over a period of 5 months as well, and I don't buy bananas right now cause they are too expensive in my book.

so perhaps I spent a total of $100, but I think I will get it all back plus some.  The excess food I will freeze and then donate what I can't use to the food banks in town.

I won't need any mulch for any of the gardens cause I am doing the 3 sisters thing. the tomatoes and okra are in pots and the peas are near an oak and ficus tree that lose leaves all year round.  when they are done sprouting and are up on the trellis I surround them with piles of leaves that I have to take off the screened in porch to clean the gutters.

Speaking of which , the stuff that comes out of the gutters has lots and lots of nutrients, so I usually scoop that all in to a bucket and put it on top of the garden beds as the plants grow. Over the fall when I didn't plant anything, clover was growing in the beds. so all is well and set for tremendous growth.

Dandelions and other greens are the only things that have been growing this winter through the drought.  I just take my scissors out and cut enough for whatever I am cooking. I add them to my beans and my scrambled eggs.  I just call them greens. 

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