The alleged "Road to Hell" is paved with good intentions. One of mine was to post regular updates from our beautiful "Laughing Dragon Garden," thus named for the giggling baby dragon figure that makes her way around the property, but mostly sits on the outdoor table, surrounded by an ever-changing bounty of freshly picked fruits and veggies.
Our happy dragon this past August
Alas, "life" has a way of getting in the way of our intentions, so this post instead becomes an end marker for our gardening year, as winter is upon us.
The garden sleeps now, but our laughing little friend is being kept company by a single late-blooming nasturtium that evidently didn't get the memo about it being winter!
Of course, the benefit to endings is that they typically also open the space for beginnings.
In 2022, we plan to expand our growing space yet again, taking over part of our upper lawn for growing potatoes, onions and various other "root crops" that generally should not be too bothered by our neighborhood herd of deer.
Guarding the strawberries, summer
The deer represents one of the biggest challenges to growing food around here.
We've tried various natural repellents, but the most effective is simply a very tall fence, unsightly as it might seem.
Being — in essence — in suburbia, our homestead is somewhat limited by space and the rules and regulations of the local "garden police," in the form of the homeowner's association.
They seem to really enjoy prohibiting things.
We originally bought our house in large part because it actually had an attached chicken coop, and we had eight lovely Rhode Island Reds for while, until we were bluntly informed by the Association that poultry was no longer permitted in the neighborhood... and we had 90 days to re-home our chickens.
We even appealed and presented the benefits of urban chicken keeping to a meeting of the HOA, but they were unsympathetic.
Our enclosed chicken pen has been repurposed as a place to grow beans...
Very ironic, considering that this neighborhood was originally established by old hippies, AND considering that if we lived inside city limits we would be allowed to keep up to nine chickens (no roosters).
We were going to use the fenced in chicken pen as a small vineyard, but instead ended up growing beans there, in what we affectionately call the "beanyard."
End-of-season decay...
We had quite a good year, harvest wise, growing over 400 pounds of food on our small patch of land... and that was without potatoes this year.
The stars of the year were the "Tomato Forest," consisting of 12 tomato plants that bore close to 125lbs of fruit; our sugar pumpkins, and of course the Beanyard which filled the freezer with green stuff that will last the entire winter, off just two small rows of beans.
A few blackberries still hanging around on December 10th; they are completely tasteless, since they have gotten no sun.
It was our first year to have strawberry plants, and that was somewhat of a learning experience... keeping the voles and rats out of there, and also combating a lot of mildew because the garden is very sheltered so there is not much to stir the air back there.
Our somewhat sad brussels sprouts
It was also our first year to try brussels sprouts and sadly the cabbage white butterfly caterpillars got more of them than we did... a few are still growing out there, as we have not had our first frost yet. They seemed to do a lot better once the insect population had died down a bit.
At this point, the Laughing Dragon Garden is quietly winding down for the winter. We still have to clean and winterize a couple of our raised beds, but once that is done, we let it rest for a while.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the gardener's job is done, because now we get to start planning for the spring, and put some of the lessons learned last year to use on the 2022 garden.
Meanwhile, there's a good bit of "hard labor" to come over the winter, preparing that piece of lawn I mentioned earlier for being ready for planting. There's always something to be done!
Thanks for stopping by and looking!
(As always, all photos are my own!)
I would love to have a garden in a place where the frost doesn't happen until December! We have a foot of snow on the ground right now...
HOAs are usually mostly a nuisance, deciding what you cannot do...
We have been blessed with a fairly mild year, so far. Usually we have some morning frosts by late October, and snow for Thanksgiving is not unusual.
Our HOA "Garden Nazis" are just a rather meddlesome bunch. We love where we live, but the HOA not so much.
Love the varieties of fruits and veggies that you were able to produce from your garden. Your laughing dragon must be your lucky charm..
Well, she definitely bright a happy and joyful energy, and that likely makes for happy plants, as well!
I am excited about your coming spring garden. Greetings from the Philippines!
We are, as well! Planting time is an exciting time.
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