2010 Family Garden Expansion!!!

We spent the last few weekends slowly taking down the garden and harvesting everything. It is sad to see summer go but then again it allows us time to start planning for the next gardening season. And we will definitely need more planning time since we are expanding the garden next year!!!! I couldn't believe my ears when my dad said "so how much bigger do you want the garden?" A bigger garden means taking up more of his beautiful lush green pasture that he keeps so perfectly groomed. He said it would just mean less for him to mow!!! I didn't argue.

The expansion is going to be about a 24 wide by 100 or so feet long. It will extend to the right of the above photo and it will leave room in the back for another raised bed or two. We will have to put up another electric fence around the expansion in order to keep the pesky deer out. The deer could easily jump this fence but so far the electricity has kept them from coming too close.

My lovely sister-in-law grew these petunias and the super sized marigolds (all from seed) in the raised beds behind her. These were no ordinary flowers let me tell ya...The petunias were supposed to be just your typical petunia but they literally took over the entire raised bed and were flowing over the sides. Dad had to tie them up so he could mow around them. Petunias were one of my moms favorite flowers so she may have had a hand in this :)

We hated having to tear them out. As you can see they were still in full bloom...but they shared the raised bed with the strawberries.... and the strawberries created so many new shoots that we figured we should get busy transplanting them. Slowly we have removed most everything from the garden except the perennial herbs , strawberries and the giant pumpkins.











The pumpkins were just an experiment this year but they really turned out great... In fact, my dad started a family contest to see who could guess the weight and the winner receives $20. We got some frost this week so I'm guessing we will pluck them from the vine this weekend and do the weigh in. Next year we are going to try and beat the new world record and grow some Atlantic Giants... :) Just kiddin dad. We are also going to add some pie pumpkins to the mix next year as Jeff recently learned to make pumpkin pie from scratch and it turned out quite delicious.