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11:32 am
February 15, 2011
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Perfection is in the eye of the beholder! One spot in the garden will be absolutely perfect while right next to is a plant that went crazy or died or climbed the chicken pen fence and put gourds on the top netting so you can't even reach them… birdhouse gourds.
That said, this year I am happy with the garden. Last year we reduced the size to about 32 by 28, fenced it all in, made raised beds with leftover deck boards, and trellises (plural??) for the tomatoes and cucumbers out of cattle fencing. It is square foot gardening style.
Now, in the spring, there is not a weed anywhere. We mulched BETWEEN the beds with heavy cardboard overlaid with loads of shredded pine tree mulch, dug out the weeds inside the beds down about six inches, filled that back in with dirt and Mel's formula, and mulched INSIDE the beds on top of that with just chopped leaves. Volunteer onions are up. I have not gotten the danged gourds off the top of the chicken pen yet, but that is just a nit.
Even the hollyhocks by the double gate are looking good, and I have killed those every year for about 20 years.
When we did garden row crop style, it took 5 of us to keep the weeds away enough to even see the veggies. So this way is the best for us, so, it is "Perfect." 
11:49 am
February 10, 2009
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When looking back at past gardens, I think my favorite was one year when I had very limited space, but managed to dig up a bed up against the front of the house house and filled it with just a few determinate tomato plants, lettuce, radishes, flowers, herbs, (lemon balm, thyme, basil, rue, bee balm) and trained pole beans up strings to the porch. I didn't have a ton, but I always had something, both to eat and to admire. It was so crowded, there was no room for weeds!
Those tomato 'bushes' were so great! perfect palm sized tomatoes, so sweet and so MANY! Yum.
After I'd moved, I drove by there one day and saw that the next tennents had stuck in one tree and one bush and had filled it full of landscape stones. UGLY!
11:54 am
April 12, 2010
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MaryB said:
Heather, will plants (like bulbs) come up thru the mulch, and do the cinder blocks kill what is planted in them when the summer heats up?
Bulbs definitely come up through mulch, but you might want to wait until your plants show and mulch around them, if you're worried or if you're going to make the mulch 6 inches deep, which is a nice thick mulch. I've never had my plants die from the heat in the cinder blocks, but they get some shade from the veggies, too, and also if they're watered they'll be ok. But you can use plants that tolerate it better. Petunias can take some dryness, and I know there are others.
11:56 am
April 12, 2010
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Farmgrammy, you cracked me up with that gourd story! lol
1:01 pm
December 27, 2008
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LOVE cardboard in the garden. No fuss, no weeds! I use it too but not in a raised bed. I just cover the whole garden with it and top with mulch of some kind. I cut holes for the plants or rows.
It's great stuff! That said, all wood products, of which cardboard is one, use up the nitrogen in the soil as they decompose so I add a lot of manure to my garden.
I know what you mean about the gourds on top of the chicken pen. I had halloween pumpkins grow up to the top of the chicken pen last year. When they started to get big, I had to go out and remove the pumpkins before they brought the top down.
1:33 pm
January 21, 2011
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I was thinking of Mexican Heather for cinder blocks, but not sure if they grow in WV. I used them in the south and loved them. They would be beautiful in cinder blocks and would cover them as they grow. I think they would tolerate the heat too.
Thanks Heather, for the ideas and hints, about the mulch too. 
4:43 pm
April 12, 2010
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No problem! I'm glad to have a place to go and talk about these things. Lord knows no one's listening to me in this house! lol For example, we moved recently and right before we did my husband says, "I talked to my cousin and she's doing this thing called Square Foot Gardening. It sounds really cool. I told her she could have the cinder blocks."
Um, yeah. Hello? 
That's what I've been doing almost our whole marriage! lol That's why I come here to talk.
5:00 pm
December 28, 2008
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We have mostly thyme and chives planted in our cinder block holes. Where it looks a little thin, some annual flowers fill in – at least some marigolds each year, some vinca (since the deer don't like it), whatever we need to visually tie things together. Or whatever is left after the baskets and pots are filled.
We started almost twenty years ago trying the cinder blocks in a strange corner as a kitchen herb garden. That worked so well that we have those cinder blocks in multiple locations, and they are all doing well. Most of them began as compost areas, were gradually filled then turned into little gardens.
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