Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The land of opportunity

Good soil is brown gold.  Out of such a dirty mess you can get delicious beets, crispy salad and juicy tomatoes, gorgeous flowers, and heavenly basil.  This spring we have made some improvements to our vegetable garden, some highly visible (a new deer fence with new bamboo poles) and some not (such as added lime [kalk] to prevent blossom end rot of the tomatoes).  So here is a photo update on the current state of affairs in our vegetable garden [or 'köksträdgård', as we say in Swedish, look, all three umlaut vowels in the same word!).

We have young peaches, pears, gooseberries, and red currants and in another month or two (three?) we hope to sink our teeth into these. A new grape arbor (designed and made by PP) with a white Niagara grape and a blue Concord grape is the new home for our two grape plants that were taking over the garden with there vigorous growth.  And this is the time for columbines (Aquilegia, akleja), we have blue, red, white, and yellow ones, three different species.

The chives are flowering too (see above), but the severe weather this winter killed off a lot of the lavender and thyme.  I think they will come back from the root stock, at least some of them. Our experiment with the "deer-proofed" (=unfenced) flower beds planted with mint varieties, sage [salvia], chives [gräslök], lamb's ears [lammöron], lavender [lavendel], and thyme [timjan] has gone far beyond expectations.  The deers refuse to even take a small bite of these herbs, so these flower borders that were grazed down to nothing are now filling in with a real herb garden.  OK, so it isn't the same as tall irises and other gorgeous flowers, but at least it is green and not chewed to death, and it smells amazing.  And the mint is spreading like wildfire, but that is OK, it is surrounded by lawn so it won't get into the vegetable garden. It is truly a wonderful time to get your hands dirty...

Click on images to see larger versions, and click here for more garden photos by Vilseskogen (me).

gooseberry to be peach to be

black gold red currants to be

strawberry flowers an infant pear

new deer fence around the vegetable garden grape arbor, newly built

Columbine (aquilegia) Aquilegia (columbine)

3 comments:

Chad Lebo said...

An impressive deer fence/high security garden compound. Please post another photo when the you finish installing the guard towers and search lights.

Your garden posts always make us homesick. Best of luck fighting the deer and beetles this summer. I'm sure your table will be a delicious place to find one's place around.

LS said...

Dear Mr. Lebo, just let us know when your Malagasy flight lands at Newark and we will be there to pick you up and take you do our table of (hopeful) plenty!

AnS said...

It is lovely to hear and look at your picture of flower. Here in Sweden has just in this days the birch got yellowgreen leaves. It is wonderful. I have made a handicap garden with ten 40 centimeters high treeboxes with soil there I want to have vegetabiles and flower. There is path between them, there I can go with my walkingframe and sit beside the boxes to plant flower and take the weed away. 4 m3 soil is coming the next week to fill the boxes.