Ben already ripped out the tomato plants that occupied the other two beds, so this row is the only one left standing. There are still some tomatoes on it, so this gets to stay in the ground a little while longer. I totally forgot to show you how our tomatoes did this summer, but they did so-so. We are getting to know how to tend to them on this side of the yard, so in the beginning they were getting too much water. Of course, spider-mites came in to live among them, and then busy life happened, thus some plants were cared for more than others. We did get to enjoy tomatoes, but our harvest wasn’t as plentiful as previous years.

There is this one last row left, but soon it will gone just like the others to make room for a winter garden. I’m not sure what Ben has planned, but I will be sure to share once it all gets underway.

We’ve been enjoying the fruits of our tomato garden. We’ve had a couple tomato plants not thrive as well due to under watering and spider mites, but we’ve been able to enjoy a few batches from the others. We pick them and they’re pretty much gone that same day, they haven’t even lasted long enough to make it into any dishes. The other day, Ben told me the best part about growing tomatoes is seeing how excited the girls get when they eat it. I definitely agree with him, it really does make all the effort worthwhile.

This is what this area looked like last year, and here it is early this year as we were preparing it for the cor-ten steel beds, and what you see above is how it will stay from now on (hopefully) and in time, with a lot more green. We used cattle fencing (again) and arched them from one bed to another, and 3′ metal stakes to keep them in place. We got the fencing from a local farm supply store and they were so long that we had to rent a u-haul to transport it from there to our home. We put two 16′  long fence pieces in one bed, arched into the one parallel to it. It takes two people to get the fencing put in.

There will be 3 dwarf citrus trees in each bed, and we will train then to follow the arches. I can’t wait until we have this gorgeous walkway of green and citrus fruit; it will be so pretty! Also, the trunks of the trees are painted to prevent it from getting sunburned. We learned this last year and did the same (see here); this year we experimented with an organic approach. This might be my favorite part of the backyard so far!

I shared our cor-ten steel beds last week and now here they are with our tomatoes. These were taken over a month ago, so they’ve grown like gang busters since then. We went much more simpler in our tomato plantings this year than previous years. Last year, we had 17 varieties and we went all our with fresh fish heads in the soil (read about it here), but this year we only did 10 varieties. We didn’t have the time to go the fish head route, so we pretty much just used E.B. Stone Organic Tomato and Vegetable Food, which we mixed into the soil per package directions.

The varieties we went with this year are Pork Chop, Dancing with Smurfs (this one is supposed to come out blue!), Brandywine, Green Tiger, Fireworks, PB Tie Dye, Cuostralee, Copia, Gold Keeper, and Wild Everglades.

Every year the Seems like every year we get attacked by spider mites. It actually wasn’t until the end of the previous years season when Ben learned what was obliterating the tomatoes prematurely. Last year we tried going with predatory mites, but it seems like we might’ve released them too late. The key is early detection. You can rid of them by spraying the leaves with water once you notice them. They like dry conditions and it gets pretty dry out here in the summer.

We created a trellis with our tomatoes and used 7 foot stakes and cattle fencing that we cut to fit, and just attached them using wire. Last year, we did the arched cattle fencing, but since we moved the vegetable garden to a new spot, it wouldn’t work here, so we just did it straight up.  This way we just weave the tomato plants through.

The girls all get involved in planting them, in one way or another, and they each have their own tomato plant. I’m so excited for to see how our harvest turns out. They’re a lot taller and fuller now, so I’m hoping that in a few weeks we will get to enjoy some fresh home-grown tomatoes.

Part 3 was almost exactly a year ago and it took a year to figure out that we needed to sort of start again. Actually, we pretty much knew by the winter, but we didn’t get to put the plan in place of how to adjust for our backyard orchard until this spring. We uprooted the handful of trees that survived, put them in 15 gal pots in the meantime, awaiting their move to their final destination (hopefully). We learned our soil wasn’t draining like it’s supposed to, so too much water was collecting at the base of the roots and essentially, suffocating them to death. After having a specialist come out, help diagnose the problem and offer solutions, we decided it would be best to lift the roots of the trees up higher and put them in raised beds. Can you tell we’re quite serious about our gardening?

In the photo above, the trees will go against the wall at back left and in the beds at far right with the trellis system on the right with the wood posts (where we will train pears and apples into espaliers). Immediately in front and left of these beds was where the trees once were; in their place, we now have three, 3 x 13 ft cor-ten steel raised beds and this is where all the seasonal vegetables will be planted (in the photo above, you can see where Ben has already started another trellis system for our tomatoes).

Every year we get better at gardening and learn from our mistakes (make more and learn from those too!). Some have been costly mistakes and some we’re glad we made, because things have turned out better. We research as much as we can, Ben especially, and talk to as many experts we can, but these things still happen. I’m excited about how everything is situated now and things already look so much better from just a couple months ago. It feels good to finally be moving forward with our garden. There were a few months where we just weren’t quite sure how to troubleshoot problems, but things are looking much better now, and hopefully everything keeps flourishing.

I wrote a post about our cor-ten steel beds here and I will have an updated post about how that side is coming along. Cor-ten steel beds are a bit of an investment, but putting money into our garden and house is important to us, and we hope one day to be able to have fruits and vegetables coming out the wazoo in our own backyard. We’ve done pretty good with vegetables in the past, so we can only get better, right?!

We’re running out of garden space, so we’re using containers to continue growing more fruits and vegetables. We purchased 4 large zinc pail planters, Ben drilled several holes in the bottom, and we potted some sweet and hot peppers. We also had some empty metal containers (that once held strawberries) just sitting there unused, so we added new soil and planted more sweet peppers in those.

We use about 7-8 habaneros in our meal every Friday night, so I’m excited to be able to grow them in our garden instead of buying them at the grocery store. Peppers are on the “dirty dozen” list of high pesticide-filled fruits/veggies (see full list here), so it’s one of the top things we want to make sure and grow ourselves.

The spicy peppers we’re growing are serranos (1 in the ground and 1 in a container), ghost peppers, and habaneros (2 in the ground – 1 red and 1 mustard – and 1 mustard in the container). The sweet bell pepper plants we have are a red, orange, lilac, and pinot noir… sounds kind of fancy, doesn’t it?!