Getting the fruit and vegetable gardens ready.

I always love getting the side yard cleaned up and ready for planting. It's usually an all day job but one of those really rewarding ones where at the end of it you can see what you accomplished. To me it always looks so "pretty" all clean and neat with newly amended black soil ready to be planted in.
This is our side yard which I first showed in the post Moonscape Makeover. Here is where we do most of our fruit and vegetable growing. It's also the area we put the Littlest Gardener's playhouse recently. I thought it would be a fun place for her to play and be able to watch our food grow.

The entrance to the side yard, the gate is kept closed so our dog doesn't go in and help herself to what ever happens to be growing here.

If we were to do this over, I know that we would've used crushed gravel instead of pea gravel around the beds. Pea gravel is difficult to walk on and impossible to roll wheelbarrows or the yard waste can on. I raked and weeded the raised beds. Then I mixed in steer manure (store bought) with a pitchfork. Every year I add some new nutrients to the soil, some years it's compost other years steer manure.

Sweet Peas garden ready to plant. She's going to plant her Sugar Snap Peas on the trellis.

This is where our Blueberries all grow. They are too close together, but that hasn't stopped them from being heavy producers. I mix in peat moss around them every other year or so to help keep the soil acidic. Here is some good information about growing Blueberries.

This is looking down from the other end of the side yard. The closest bed has a Fig tree 'Desert King' and strawberries. They seem to do really well together.

I have the tomato seeds started inside, we're trying two new ones this year; 'Black Krim' (thanks Ginger) and 'Tigerella'. Every year it's fun to decide what else we will grow here. Some years it's broccoli or potatoes. We've also tried corn, pumpkins and zucchini.