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Our Vegetable Garden.
Stouffville, Ontario
November 2004 - present

I began making my squarefoot vegetable garden
by laying landscaping fabric directly on the lawn.
Regrading the area with mulch we have from
cutting down three 40ft. Poplars.
I used 2"x8" cedar for the boxes and filled them with
triple mix, compost, and an organic fertilizer.
April 7, 2005.

I put a rabbit-proof cage over the top of each box.
I also added a second box to each box as the plants
grew taller and became smushed against the top
of each cage. This area will eventually have nine boxes,
then I will make another huge square of nine boxes
with a 5 foot wide resting area between them.
Hopefully, next year I will build a fence
around the vegetable garden.
July 12, 2005.

We rebuilt this garden during the following summer of 2006.
The poplar mulch was continually growing mushrooms and
did not look good. I think that the landscape fabric was
causing it to be too damp. We removed all the boxes,
mulch and landscape fabric, tilled the ground, and put
proper mulch directly on the ground. There is now a flower
garden in front of the vegetable garden. Next year we
hope to double this in size.

The Square Foot garden in the winter.
2006

The Square Foot garden REALLY covered in snow.
January 2007

The square foot garden in full swing.
July 2007

Yay! We did it! At the end of 2007, we were able to double
the size of the square foot garden.

Snow in July!?!
We had a hail storm that damaged a lot of vegetables.
July 26, 2008.

Ohh! the possibilities!!! Now I want to add MORE and
MORE boxes!! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 2007

The first box I planted has strawberry in it.
April 22, 2005.

This is what the strawberry plants looked like in the spring.
May 6, 2005.

This is what the strawberry plants looked like
in the summer, 2 months later .
July 12, 2005.

Strawberry flowers blooming, ready to become fruit.
May 12, 2006.

Strawberries ready to pick and eat.
They're really sweet and perfect this year.
June 17, 2006.

A big bowl of strawberries are picked every day
from my 3 boxes of strawberry plants.
June 18, 2007.

This is the first vegtable squarefoot garden I planted.
Each square foot is planted with something different.
This box has: marigolds, broccoli, bok choy,
romaine lettuce, and green onions.
May 6, 2005.

The same box a couple of months later.
The broccoli, romaine lettuce, and bok choy were wonderful. Green beans, basil, and onion are now growing in this box.
Not bad for my first year square foot gardening.
Verity is passing me a vegetable marker.
July 12, 2005.

Golden beets growing in the corner.
Romaine lettuce, broccoli and butter lettuce.
June 17, 2006.

Haifa holding broccoli, romain lettuce, butter lettuce, and kale.
June 21, 2005.

Strawberry plants in cups that Justice will sell
at the side of the road.
Parsley, lettuce and beets that I grew from seed
which are now ready to go out into the garden.
May 12, 2006.

A table full of seedlings. Bottom left is my new experiment
using Dixie cups as pots (planted with Daisies and Lavender).
Above that is a tray fitted with square containers designed
for the trays for an efficient use of space (18 pots per tray).
The first 2 trays on the right are Geraniums, then 6 large pots
with various tomato plants, peppers are growing in the tray
at the top right. The top left has a big tomato plant growing.
I started it on March 6. I'm hoping to have tomatoes by June.
April 13, 2007.

Onion, parsley, beets, swiss chard, marigolds, and carrots.
July 12, 2005.

Onion, coriander, beets, romaine lettuce, butter lettuce,
Red Russian kale, marigolds, and carrots.
July 12, 2005.

Romaine and butter lettuce.
August 2006.

A massive organic carrot from my garden. We came back
from being in Virginia at the end of November and harvested
a huge amount of carrots, beets, green onion and parsley.
I served this carrot in slices at a dinner party. One of the
guests thought that it was sweet potato because of the size
of the slices. November 20, 2005.

It seems that the middle carrot is BRAIDED!!!
October 16, 2007.

Yes... I'm digging up carrots in the snow. Am I crazy?
Is this taking gardening too far? No way! The cold
helps them break down some of their starch into sugars
making the carrots sweeter. And I had SO MUCH FUN that
I thought I should have a "diggin up carrots in the snow"
party. The following week, Natalya and I dug up another
3 pounds of carrots together. I LOVE IT!!!!
November 23, 2007.

From left to right: squash, tomato, cucumber
with some bean plants in the bottom left corner.
Summer 2006.

A slightly out-of-focus acorn squash.
Summer 2006.

Buttercup squash.
Summer 2006

At the heart of a yellow crookneck squash plant,
squashes at various stages of development.
This single plant produced probably over
one hundred squash - it was extremely prolific.
In fact, it was scary - it reminded me of
"Little Shop of Horrors".
It grew to take up a space about 4' x 6'.
Summer 2006.

A basket of roma tomatoes, green, purple, and yellow
string beans, zucchini and crookneck squash.
August 2007.

Here is our only apple produced by our apple orchard this year.
And a canteloupe. We were feeding several families with the amount of tomatoes and zucchini we harvested.

We built a teepee for the sugarsnap peas to climb. We filled the
middle with mulch so that the children could sit inside.

Verity standing in front of our monster zucchini plants.

Verity inspecting one of our GIANT zucchini's.
I think it's bigger than her!

What a harvest! Red Russian kale, sugarsnap peas,
green beans, monster zucchini and beautiful beets.

I asked Haifa and Verity to go pick a few carrots...
they came back with over 50 carrots! It is fun to pull
them out of the ground. July 2007.

Verity hugging a basket of vegetables we just
finished picking together.
October 9, 2007.

In the basket, we have bokchoy, mizuna, arugula, romaine
and red leaf lettuce, orange pepper, purslane, onions, green
and purple string beans, purple and orange carrots, broccoli,
parsley, mint, purple and golden beets, cherry and grape tomatoes, and two types of ground cherries. Notice that this
was harvested in October - still going strong!
October 9, 2007.

Raspberry plants in cedar boxes.

Raspberries beginning to mature.

Blackberries beginning to ripen.
We got a lot of them this year.
They were a real treat.
September 2006.

Our young apple orchard. We planted 4 apple trees at the very
back of our yard even before we took possession of the house.
Summer 2004.

Our fruit orchard has four apple trees on the left including:
MacIntosh, Golden Delicious, and Red Delicious.
We have two cherry trees on the right and
two more holes waiting for a pear and a peach tree.
May 12, 2006.

The orchard viewed from the shed. One cherry tree died.
But we now have a 4-in-one pear tree. 2007

A close-up of a bumblebee hard at work among
our apple blossoms. May 12, 2006.

Despite all the lovely blossoms on our apple trees
in the spring. We only had one apple.
September 2006.

Here's a close-up of "THE" apple.
We think it's a MacIntosh.
It was unbelievably juicy and sweet.
September 2006.

Grandma Valerie gave Justice a Saskatoon Berry tree
for his first bithday. When we bought this house and
sold our house in Elmvale, we moved it here. It is
doing really well. May 12, 2006.

The Saskatoonberry tree.
Fall 2007.

The Saskatoonberry tree bursting with fruit
ready to pick.
July 19, 2008.

Finally, we picked enough fruit to make Saskatoonberry jam.
It was heavenly and lasted us a whole year.
July 2008.

Melanie and Verity gardening together.
September 2007.

The rabbits come around at least twice a day.
They have become so used to us
that they don't mind us getting close.
Luckily they prefer clover to most of what I grow.

A harvest of basil, eggplant, red pepper, tomatoes,
cucumber and a baby watermelon.
September 4, 2008.

A harvest of green peppers, Roma tomatoes,
red and yellow onions and basil.
All to make spaghetti sauce straight from my garden.
September 14, 2008.

The largest watermelon we've been able to grow to date.
September 9, 2008.

Inside the watermelon - not what we expected.
Still tasted pretty good. Probably not ready yet.
September 9, 2008.

Verity hugging one of our fabulous cabbages this year.
September 16, 2008.

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