Giveaway: Project F.A.R.M. Marvin’s Garden

The tomatoes are surviving but will not bear again until we get cooler temperatures. Lavender seems to love the heat and it will be even more beautiful with the autumn rains. What lovely art and fences Marvin’s Gardens has! Mary Beth

Oh, those are beautiful! This year I planted a butterfly garden with all perennials native to this area. The rabbits decided they really love the Meadow Blazing Stars and have eaten those all the way to the ground. I’m hoping they’ll survive and come back next summer. The butterfly milkweed is blooming now and everything else looks pretty good. I also hope to plant some Balsam Fir and a Tamarack tree before winter.

Lovely creations! I live in a townhouse, so I don’t have a plot of land to grow my own veggies, but I planted some lovely Morning Glorys and Cosmos in a large, decorative container on my deck. No flowers have bloomed yet, but it’s lush and full and the Morning Glory has created vines everywhere!

I don’t have a garden this year but enjoy going to the farmers mkt for fresh vegetables grown local

My garden is my sanctuary… enjoyed being on the Open Gate Garden tour this year. Lots of work and I’m happy it’s over but a great overall experience. I’m not a vegetable gardener, but love the beauty of flowers, shrubs and fruit trees.

The iron work is beautiful!!! Our garden is a bit out of control this year… We planted too much!!! Cukes, pickling cukes, peppers, strawberries (which arent doing well!! ), tomatoes like Crazy and squash and green beans ( my girls favorite, they pick them right off of the plant and munch them!!) the harvest will be great!! Can’t wait!!!

My husband always took care of the garden and now that I am retired I am trying my hand at it. For many years I could not even get a seed to emerge. Imagine my surprise, when last year the first little cotyledons poked up and I ended up with a glorious bed of six foot sunflowers! And, it happened again this year. Sunflowers are near and dear to my heart as they make me feel closer to my mom. Needless to say, I am hooked and the quest is on to grow more plant and vegetables.

Planted sweet peas in anticipation of our first grandchild Zoe in August. Hopefully they will be in full bloom when she arrives. We also planted two window boxes at the front of the house with asparagus fern, vinca, boston fern and impatiens. .

This year we put in a raised bed for tomatoes and basil. We also have some green onions, some herbs in a galvanized bucket and rhubarb. Everything is in raised beds as we tried a huge garden a couple of years ago and lost most of it to gophers. My daughter and I made rhubarb strawberry jam and some blueberry rhubarb jam. We have a u-pick hydroponic strawberry farm and a u-pick blueberry farm nearby that we always go to as soon as the berries are ripe. Next year we are going to add a few more raised beds so we can add to the garden.

Last year I planted hollyhocks in a planter in our backyard in Greenville, NC. Of course, they don’t bloom until the second year. The pot is not nearly large enough, but I did get some gorgeous blooms this year.

I am lucky that my husband owns a farm in the next county. We always have to deal with the extremes in weather – too hot, too much rain or none. After replanting about three times, we got wonderful tomatoes, green bean, squash, cucumbers, etc. I was happy we actually had watermelons this year – they are delicious. My husband finally got to plant the vintage beans – yard peas. They are currently blooming – he has “invented” the easiest and yummy recipte for cooking them. The peas are a treat – can’t wait to try them. My friend, Kathy, gave us some peas from the mountains – October peas. They are, also, blooming.

I planted gladioli, wild flowers from seeds, Purple Queen Zinna and white one. Morning glory pop up everywhere but I only let the one near the mail box and garden fence to survive. There are plenty of volunteer Thai and sweet basil, lemon verbena, lavender, lemon balm grow like weed. I added new cecile Burn Rose, artichokes, sunflower, sweet peas, dandelion, egg plants, sweet pepper cherries, butterfly flowers, Japanese Wax leaves, salad, moss roses, petunia, and rocket arugula. Double delight rose is the newest rose. I want the fragrance Pink Peace rose but haven’t find it yet. There’s always something bloom at the house or the garden.
The fragrant is delightful through spring to Fall. Lemongrass and elderberry grow huge! I need sweetheart cherry or 4 in 1 cherries tree to complete the fruits tree list.
There will be no fruit except for shelter apple tree for me as well as people that I know in my state. Very sad.

Planted tomatoes in our little patch afte many
Years without our country garden ( moved into town). And it’s doing pretty good to my surprise.

Unfortunately, I have not planted anything new this year and we didn’t plant a vegetable garden. We are in such a severe drought situation with irrigation water at a premium and to be shut off about six weeks early that we decided not to plant and just do our best to keep our trees, lawn, flowers, etc. alive. It has been a huge challenge!

I did want to just say that those metal art pieces are just wonderful and very creative. Anyone would be fortunate to have a piece to enhance their garden or patio!
Beautiful work!
CJ

You are beautiful metal workers! My brother has been a metal sculptor and he is now a beautiful hand-made kitchen knife maker. A true artisan like you two are.
I planted squash, basil, lettuce and tomatoes, and I have a small but productive patch of strawberries that has been yielding quite a few strawberries. But my favorite thing that I planted this year are my carrots. I am so amazed by them. Perhaps because I am still a beginning gardener. But I cannot believe that something as small as a coffee ground goes into the soil, it seems to reluctantly emerge, it grows slowly but steadily and yet MYSTERIOUSLY!!! I cannot see what is happening underground. Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I can yank out a lovely, bright orange, sweet, jewel from the darkness below. I will never again see the humble carrot as anything but a miracle of nature 😉

I will admit to not having much of a green thumb, but I keep trying!
I planted a garden (from seed) behind the gym I work out at in town. To identify the plants, I used cute little popsicle sticks I had glued together like a cross for an art project at church.
Another member of the gym put some manure on top of my plantings (not realizing I had planted!). She had no idea what the crosses were for and tossed them aside. My mystery garden is producing a lot of plants, I’m just not too sure what they are!

I haven’t had much time for a personal garden other than my flowers. However, my mom who lives in the country insisted she have hers. So she has tomatoes, peppers, green beans and squash. What isn’t being eaten by the grasshoppers is delicious. This is a very small garden compared to the years past but it gives her some normalcy to her life as she struggles everyday just to exist with terminal stage 4 lung cancer. We planted the garden right outside her Window so she can see it. She turns 70 on July 28th and we are going to decorate and celebrate another birthday with our mom.

Such lovely ironwork! I have had some really good green beans, once I fenced them off from those “wascally wabbitts” and the tomatoes look great, just not ripening yet. And this year, my front yard perennial flowers looked more like the English cottage style I’ve been trying to acheive.

We didn’t plant much this year, only tomatoes, peppers, and a few pumpkins. So far, we have gotten a few tomatoes and the pumpkins are blooming, but the peppers are a bust. Too much rain this year I guess.

Due to the severe drouth we are experiencing (so far this year we have had a little less than 3 inchs of moisture and well is slow to recover now after 7 years of dry dry dry) I have only planted my heirloom beans and potatoes to have seed for next year and some food for this year….counting on my neighbor to trade for squash.

We recently purchased a 100 year old home on a triple lot in our town. The best part is having twice the yard to plant in. I have an herb garden with rosemary,basil, oregano, cilantro (my favorite) , parsely and thyme. In my kitchen garden I have eggplant, leeks, tomatoes ( a couple of heirlooms), cabbage, lettuce, radishes, carrots, green beans and a variety of squash. My rhubarb is almost done, but managed to can up quite a bit and give some to friends. We have a found our best way to mulch and keep weeds to a minimum is to layer 3-4 sheets of newspaper wetted down with water and covered with seveal inches of lawn clippings.
I have been a MJ “farmgirl” for four years. We have our first flock of hens, a mix of breeds, Buff Orpington, Lacy Wyanotte, Ameracaunas and a barred rock. They are so fun and getting big enough to start laying soon. I wouold love to witn this wtreath as we have only recently been seeing cardinals in our yard altjough we have been tryin gto lure them for several years.My husband and I are avid birdwatchers!

These sculptures are gorgeous!! We have a large patch of sweet corn in one garden, then in the second garden the usual tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, peas, potatoes, green beans and herbs.

Gardening on the North Mountain by the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia brings a mismatch of weather and temperatures, but my gardens are flourishing this year 🙂 Lettuce, spinach, kale, tomatoes, bush and pole beans, peas, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, pumpkins, summer and winter squash, potatoes….and the usual mixture of herbs flourishing as well as the wild blackberries and raspberries. The apple and pear trees do not seem to be doing much this year fruit wise through 🙁

I don’t have room for a real vegetable garden, but do have lots of flower beds. This year I found a spot to plant 3 tomato plants and a green pepper. The tomatoes are growing like crazy and the green peppers are rotten because of all our rain. Would love to win this draw.

I live in an area that is all sand and sugar sand hills, so I planted 3 types of tomatoes in a large syrup tub so I could control the soil. They were growing well and then developed black spots on the bottoms of the tomatoes. I went on line and googled the problem and found out they had bottom end stem rot. The solution? More calcium. I added Oyster Shell (borrowed from my Dixie Chicks) and Epsom Salts as instructed, removed the damaged tomatoes and voila! new tomatoes are growing with no damage to the ends. I live to be outdoors. Love your art work.

Our tomatoes are starting to turn! I am harvesting lovely Swiss chard and many different types of leaf lettuce. I feel a lovely wilted salad coming on….Cucumbers are getting close! I just made my fourth batch of rhubarb jam. Oh, yes! The zucs are popping and growing as we speak…Buttercup squash is starting to form. I have a great recipe for squash soup with shrimp that is wonderful during the fall. Something about those two just go together…
Learning how to craft metal work has always been on my bucket list. Nice work, Marvin’s Garden!