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Summer Garden 2013- What’s Growing?

May 14, 2013
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I’ve decided to keep it small and simple this year for our summer garden and we’re only using the two smaller raised beds we have. There’s more space available for gardening, just no space in my life right now for more of me gardening. I’m happy with what I’ve got and so far, so good.

This year, there have been no garden monsters, thankfully, pulling up my plants. I’ve finally learned from years past and covered the plants with chicken wire until they were big enough to crowd the boxes and keep the masked bandits out.

Changes this year:

Tomatoes: Almost every year we get big beautiful plants which develop plenty of tomatoes and then get blossom end rot. This year I buried several crushed egg shells in the bottom of each hole where I planted the tomatoes. Supposedly the extra calcium in the egg shells will help prevent …

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Summer Garden 2012

May 29, 2012
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I seriously debated whether or not I wanted to spend the time, effort and money to do a garden this year. In the past we’ve built raised beds, I tracked every expense to see if it’s worth it, and last year only planted half a garden. This year, even though I was a bit late in getting started, I decided to jump in all the way and plant every bit of space in our raised beds. With a little help from family and friends we got the beds ready in a weekend.

We went with a modified version of the no-dig method this year. Instead of hay, alfalfa, compost and fertilizer, I substituted organic garden soil for the compost and fertilizer. Last year we lost a lot of soil in the boxes to various digging creatures and general decomposition. The hay and alfalfa break down every year so …

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Introducing Mount Royal Farms

June 25, 2011
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Dear Readers,

I have been unfaithful. I won’t even try to make an excuse for my infidelity because I’m hoping when you see what I’ve been doing, you’ll understand and be willing to share your affections. If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen the tell-tale signs of my latest passion; the murmurs of new love, the late night tweets, the giddiness of schoolgirl infatuation.  I have been straying from Former Chef with a younger, and some might say, sexier blog; MountRoyalFarms.

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Summer Garden 2011; Sometimes Smaller is Better

May 27, 2011
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I’ve written quite a bit over the last 2 years about my garden and specifically about the no-dig gardening method. This year the plan is a little different. I’ll still have a garden, but it will be smaller and use a more traditional planting method.

While I certainly believe the no-dig method works well, this year I decided to only use my two smaller garden beds (plus a piece of the larger one) and fill them with soil and compost instead of the hay, alfalfa and compost I used previously.

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Final Update for Summer Garden 2010 & Giveaway Winner

November 6, 2010
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In Southern California our gardening season begins early and contrary to popular thought, ends early too, or at least it did for me. Despite my best efforts at staggering the planting, most of my garden was finished by early September when others were in the full flush of their tomato days.

Many of you have been following along with the saga of my garden this past summer be it the battle with my digging monsters or the desire to answer the question of  “what price gardening?” Below are photos of the devastation I found when I came home from 2 weeks in Cambodia. Even though there was nothing growing in the beds, and nothing covering them or preventing the animals from climbing inside to dig to their little heart’s content, they persisted in digging under and ruining my nice pathways. All those boards and bricks were tossed asunder by …

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Garden Update-Have I Won the Battle?

June 4, 2010
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I may not have won the war, but I may have won the battle, at least for now. It seems like my monsters have found other places to dig besides in and around my garden beds. I like to imagine them frustrated; “What are these boards and bricks and rocks doing in my buffet? Let’s go somewhere else...”

As for my plants, they seem to be doing well. I’ve been able to remove the caging off the eggplants and squash and the effect was amazing. The zucchini doubled in size overnight. I am not exaggerating. It doubled. It was almost as if it was singing, “Born free....” and stretching it’s arms toward the sky.
Yes, both the animals and plants talk in my garden.
The tomatoes seem to be happy and two of the plants have quite a few green tomatoes on them. I harvested my first …

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