22.0 Kitchen Garden
This is the only area that might need daily attention during the heaviest growing season. However, "weeding" should be the same as harvesting things to eat.
In the summer, the part of this area next to the house is very hot, and even in winter, if the wind isn't blowing much, the afternoon sun gives its all here.
Perhaps a patio and greenhouse that can also be shaded along the west side of the house, tied into the west deck.
The human water supply is from a 300 foot well. The pump needed replacing in 2006. Expensive. Whatever garden or landscaping done near here needs to allow for a large truck to be broght in.
From the kitchen garden area when the leaves are off, you can see the neighbours to the north.
This bird waterer will be moving and will have a new reflection to see.
Workers moved this bay window which will become the south front of the greenhouse, but for now needs to be stored near where it will be used.
Bay window and greenhouse materials stashed here, close to where it will be built, though that will be next year at the earliest.
barely visible streaks of falling rain drops. Big cloud, but only a raindrop or two per square meter per 30 seconds for about 10 minutes. From the deck the sun made them look like golden droplets, the cell phone caught them as golden streaks, not very many though.
Morning light in kitchen garden, early fall
I think clothesline ought to go somewhere else other than take up garden space. Particularly since no one hardly uses except me, and even me not as much as I could have. Dryer is so much more convenient. Better wold be a pully system that keeps things high enough.
Prior to rearranging to take advantage of drainage and sunlight. It might make sense to remove the bald cypress in the middle and increase the area getting the morning sun. However, there's plenty of square feet getting nice warm sun.
There's a very clear slope down toward top of photo, towards the upper pond. This should be a cross between an english formal garden and a japanese "natural" garden. Definitely will need to do something like mulch or rock paths.
Pretty close to a contour line. Plan is to layer sheet mulch and branches and dirt and wood chips
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Even though temp did not get above 20 up on the back deck, the snow did melt off in the places where the heat is collected by the growth there, and roots under?
Vine coming up trunk of a bald cypress.
Winter creeper?
Some design thoughts taking into consideration light and water flow.
Walking from the house to the workshop the other morning, fortunately in my boots, I hit metal not far from the clothes rack. I had hit it something there the day before and thought it was a bald cypress knee, but they have been quite good about keeping their knees away from the areas I mow. I stopped to investigate and discovered the very top of this rod. Have no idea what it is what it might be doing here. Dug down but even then it is still a lot longer and still pretty firmly stuck. This is the area where another garden bed may be, and at least the soil horizons here about the same as the other places in the kitchen garden -- couple inches of darker brown rich soil turning to lighter brown clay mud that hold waster a day or two.
Shows the location of the camera for this observation. A few of the features are annotated, and one can see the canopy cover.
Formal inventory of areas (red) and features (yellow) visible from this observation point. Details about the areas and features can be found at http://www.redwoodtwig.com/TheArtGarden/AreaFeaturePlant At this stage, no individual plants are in the inventory, though some of the features relate to a single tree or pair of trees.
West of house
Most of the year the central area here gets sun most of the day. The house casts a distinct shadow during the mornings but is in full blazing sun in the afternoons and evenings. This was my first explicit sun tracking video for this area and I've since decided a more accurate one, done from the roof, would be more better. This one is overly optimistic about how sunny it is, I think.
When moved in, the west deck looked out over a largish lawn and was open to the blistering hot sun on summer afternoons, and cold winds in the winter.
Trying to eliminate the wet spot that occurs when the spigot is used or when it rains. Basically need to make a drainage swale past the little hump that's in the way. There was an inch fall between the stakes, with a 2 inch rise in between...
Trying to eliminate the wet spot that occurs when the spigot is used or when it rains. Basically need to make a drainage swale past the little hump that's in the way. There was an inch fall between the stakes, with a 2 inch rise in between...
