The new vegetable garden
by Colleen Vanderlinden • June 2, 2009 • Books, Miscellaneous • 15 Comments
It’s been a busy spring around here, and while I’ve spent the last few posts here giving away stuff and admiring my mad garden design skills (ha ha) I haven’t even shown you all the best part. You may now bask in the glory of my new vegetable garden:
Okay, so it’s not exactly lush and fruitful just yet, but it’s on its way! At the front are eight of the tomatoes I started inside this winter. I’m happy with the way they’re growing. The red plastic is one of our experiments this year—we wanted to see if it would really make a difference or not. So far, these are a bit bigger than tomatoes planted on the same day without the red plastic. We’ll see if the trend continues throughout the season. Behind the tomatoes, we have onions, leeks, carrots, radishes, turnips, broccoli, brussels sprouts, lettuces, watermelons, acorn squashes, and corn. At the very back, along the fence, we’ve planted potatoes. So far, everything has sprouted, and now we’re thinning seedlings. (Well, we’re thinning the stuff I planted. I’m a bit more, um, haphazard, than my husband is with the seeding….)
Here’s a view looking out in the other direction:
My favorite thing about this garden, besides all of the food we’re going to get out of it, is that this was totally wasted space before. I’ve written about this area. It started out as a butterfly garden, but it sucked because we don’t really sit and look at this area all that much. Then it was going to be a cutting garden, but I gave up on that pretty early because I was thinking it would be a good spot to grow veggies. Then last year, we had a mix of some of the perennials and some veggies, including tomatoes and some beans and cucumbers climbing the fence. Some of you might remember that my neighbors made me cry when they ripped out my plants in an insane yard cleaning frenzy (why they felt the need to clean my yard, I still don’t quite understand…)
But now we have this new veggie garden, and it more than doubles the amount of vegetable garden space we had previously. Each of the long beds is four feet wide by 15 feet long. Notice that there is nothing growing within a foot of the fence between me and my neighbor 
Your tomatoes are so big and beautiful. Mine are still little dwarfs. Why the red? I know that they say it is the reflection of red light that tomatoes like, but I can’t for the life of me figure out, what in nature that it is mimicking. Maybe they are just vain and like to see their color reflected everywhere.
I remember! And still can’t believe someone would do that!!
Was it the short piece of fence or the longer one that had your plants growing?
This garden looks like it will be beautiful!
I am glad to see the area become productive! Best of luck with the tomatoes.
Your tomatoes are huge! Great use of a side yard, too.
Hi Mary!
They should be—they’ve been coddled almost as much as my children -) Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks, Katie!
Hi Terry,
That was pretty insane. I’ve gotten over it (mostly…)
It was the long piece of fence that divides their driveway and my side yard.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Kerry,
Thank you! Here’s what Gardener’s Supply says about the red plastic:
“The red plastic actually reflects far-red light wavelengths upward into your tomato plants. This triggers the release of a natural plant protein that stimulates more rapid growth and development. Your plants will mature faster, look bushier, and give you a more flavorful, more abundant harvest than ever before.”
We shall see
Thanks for stopping by!
The garden looks great and your tomato plants seem huge for the beginning of June, Colleen!
Yes – much better to keep everything inside the fence in this situation…some people get weird about driveway edges. Good luck with this year’s crop.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Hi Annie!
Thanks! Yes, I definitely learned my lesson about that…
Thanks for stopping by!
It looks lovely. What tomatoes are they? Enjoy the new space, and forget the neighbors.
Hi Jenny!
Thank you! In all honesty, my neighbors could be a lot worse. They’re quiet and rarely come outside. But they apparently hate cucumbers and morning glories
Let’s see, in those beds I have ‘Brandywine,’ ‘Yellow Pear,’ ‘Chudo Rinka,’ ‘Juliet,’ ‘Kellogg’s Breakfast,’ ‘Subarctic Plenty,’ ‘Goji Faranji,’ and ‘Stupice.’ Several of them are new to me, so I can’t wait to see how I like them.
Thanks for stopping by!
I have a veggie garden along my driveway and at the south side of my house–the only really sunny spots I have. My veggies are winter-sown and still a little small, but I’m getting ready to plant the tomatoes! I have a bunch of different heirloom varieties, though none the same as yours (there are just so many to try!).
Hi Monica!
That’s kind of how I have to work my veggie gardens. We have four different vegetable garden areas because we’re trying to work around the huge maple tree in our yard. Hmm. Maybe we should swap heirloom seeds later on??
I love winter sowing. I didn’t do much this year because I was humongously pregnant and just too tired to bother. I’ll definitely be wsing this year, though!
Thank you for stopping by!
Looks great, Colleen! I’ll be really curious to hear how the red works with the tomatoes. Best of luck!