Rockin' my gypsy soul!: Tour around the Garden

I hope you enjoy a tour around the garden......... :-D

The Nicaragua House/Kitchen and the "Nic Garden."

A fig and loquat tree, nopales, salvia, flame acanthus, cranberry hibiscus, yellow canna lilies, red yucca and a few other stray things!!

Nic House front landscaping. Under the ornamental palm is the "mint bed." Behind the cranberry hibiscus bushes are hoja santa and more yellow cannas, with malabar spinach creeping across the ground.

Miraculous hyacinth bean (lab lab) vines from my friend Dyan. Only 5 seeds created this purple beauty!! Jalapeños, beans, and wild blackberry bushes are all in there along the fences.

The demonstration "fenced" area...in case where you garden...free-range livestock (either belonging to your neighbor or you!!) are an issue!! Sweet potatoes, Peking black beans, Chinese cabbage, carrots, and more lab lab are growing in here.

The Nicaragua House Kitchen

Currently, the "Lorena Stove" is not working...so I've COMPLETELY taken over the "kitchen" area as the "nic garden" shed...or as Kathleen would say...this is now my personal "office!!" The little beds on either side of the shed are filled with wild edibles--unicorn plants and purslane. The trash cans hold harvested garden soil and compost for upcoming compost pile building and seed flatting.

Love Pinterest for clever trellising ideas!! You'll see these things growing here: radishes, kale, pickling cucumbers, beets, leeks, one lone mammoth sunflower, rutabagas, arugula, Swiss chard, mustard greens, vegetable amaranth, asparagus beans...with broccoli in the back bed.

A random "kitchen sink" bed...started off with lab lab planted in the bed, only a few plants came up on either end...so I salvaged some "volunteer" squash and watermelon plants that came up unwanted at other random places in the garden and transferred them to the central part of the bed. So...hence...a little of this and a little of this...everything but the kitchen sink!!

Before everything really started growing BIG in this bed, I had small rocks marking out curved sections...for visual effect!!...of course you can't see any of that now...but the hodge podge is very pleasing to me. Thai basil, regular basil, Swiss chard, yellow leaf sweet potato vines. I LOVE the metal flamingo!!

...one of the many "cold" compost piles we've built.

Asparagus beans took over the red bud tree. I think the "volunteer" squashish looking vine that is NOW taking over is a bird house gourd!! YEA!! I had transplanted it from elsewhere in the garden and had no idea what it was!! 5 perennial tree collard plants, a few pickling cucumbers/kale/beans all around the red bud tree. HUGE mass of lab lab that had to have fencing around it to contain it!! I've cut it back out of the pathways...just so I could get through!! LOVE IT!! I pray for it to flower and make some seed pods before freezing weather sets in!!

...some cantaloups, fava beans, purple potatoes, red clover, velvet beans, butternut squash, canary melon, lima beans, pumpkin, a few more mammoth sunflowers...more compost piles...YEA--black gold...and I don't mean OIL!!

In honor of my "African brother" Job's "no-till" agricultural philosophy...my "no-till" bed along the chicken yard. A teeny tiny mimosa tree just getting started at the corner, loofah gourd plants vining up all along the fence, random quinoa, purple potatoes, Chinese cabbage plants thrown in for good measure!!

Pathway between that obstreperous "fenced-in" lab lab and my "fun flower bed" along the east side of the chicken yard. Yellow cannas...just now recuperating from the HOT summer, dusty miller, more cranberry hibiscus, some cute little red perennial flowers the name of which I still do not know...I just dug them up from the abandoned perennial flower nursery beds!!

The butternut squash, canary melons, pumpkins, and lima beans....

The tree collard space....

Some "urban gardening" techniques are also incorporated in the Nic Garden. Rooftop gardening here...with Chinese cabbage and radishes. Testing out using empty soda cans in one of the boxes (old dresser drawer!!) along with some compost/soil and with hay on top for mulch. The set-up has a soaker hose to make it easy to water.

The outdoor work area.

Inside my "office." Barley is drying...sorghum and millet are drying in pillowcases hanging from the ceiling. The seed saving project is under the plastic bags to protect from a leaky roof!!

Trying my hand at propagating things I have found around the farm along with seeds I've saved from things I've eaten: cottonwood, mulberry, crepe myrtle, fig and moringa trees; oleander bushes, several (no names as yet!!) wild flowers, avocados, papayas, curry trees.....with a tub of purple irises waiting to be replanted...which Courtney rescued from a compost pile!!

Nic House north landscaping bed. The yellow cannas have been the HAPPIEST in this bed!!....very little direct sun...and a "leaky" soaker hose!! I built the beds and gravel pathways in this area where there were once just weeds and snakes!!

South side of the chicken yard...this is where the bio mass stockpile is kept organized awaiting the next compost pile building. Rain-ruined goat hay, harvested bio mass from various grain crops, and a little "kitchen/garden" compost pile where I throw garden clippings/vegetables (not weeds with seeds!!). Previously, when all of this area was just weeds, a pile of firewood/sticks was also in here which would have been used in the outdoor kitchen stove. That is where I found the 5' long snake skin...and I have still seen LIVE big garden snakes around the area!! So...I made a raised firewood stack along the kitchen wall. I think it looks MUCH better...if I say so myself!!

Another alternative gardening approach...some vertical gardening. Trellising the watermelons up the chicken fence...with plastic jugs as "cradles" for the baby watermelons!! This bed is sort of another "kitchen sink" area!! Morning glories (unfortunately NOT the beautiful deep purple ones like Mamaw Dare used to grow!!), zinnas, basil, yellow cannas, Chinese cabbage and two mimosa trees on both ends of the bed...along with a wild edible "buffalo gourd" vine brought from Deonne's in Oklahoma... all co-mingling together!!! The solar dehydrator can be seen on the back left.

The once weed/snake patch!! The rainwater collection area with outdoor shower...the washboard sink for hand washing my clothes...the clothesline...I LOVE IT!!

More urban gardening techniques...potato tower with a few zinnias for color until the potatoes come up!! A rain gutter "salad" greens vertical garden as seen on Pinterest!! I have spinach and arugula growing there and will harvest them as "baby greens."

A beautiful moringa tree!!...investigate the wonderful nutritional value of that tree!! My beauties...the eggplant plants below. Trumpet vine, also brought from Oklahoma, vining up the wall of the shower. The rainwater collection cistern works great.

More Nic House landscaping...cranberry hibiscus and yellow cannas. I've been swapping people here and there for other colors of cannas...to give some color diversity to the areas around the Nic House. In the "nursery" I currently have a little peach canna, some "short" cannas (currently of undetermined color!!), and a little burgundy variegated leaved variety...next year it will look amazing around the Nic House!!