Today’s photos are from Nancy Hallberg in Waccabuc, New York. Nancy is Taunton’s marketing guru, and we’re so glad to have a serious gardener in her position! We last saw Nancy’s garden back in May of 2012 (refresh your memory HERE), when we oohed and aahed over her tree peonies. Today she’s back with her veggies!
She discussed her garden with our web producer, Antonio, so he gives us commentary today: Today, Taunton’s very own Nancy Hallberg shares her vegetable garden with you. Nancy and her husband Garth carved their growing spaces out of a steep and rocky slope in their backyard. After years of work, they’re enjoying a veggie-filled plateau all growing season long.
Nancy says, “All the raised beds are made of engineered plastic ‘wood’ which never decomposes (and is made of recycled material). The trellises are our own design, and can be moved from bed to bed quickly and easily – made inexpensively from netting and a couple of pieces of aluminum tubing, they’re now in their 4th season of service. The new asparagus bed is on the far right, just above the stone wall.”
Nancy and Garth also relish in outsmarting outdoor temperatures to make sure they get the crops they want. “Lettuce grows happily even when it starts to get hot in the shallow beds against the back wall. They don’t get the searing late summer sun because they’re shaded by Andromeda and the rising terrace behind them.”
The two also love their homegrown tomatoes, and so use tomato automators and Reemay to facilitate growth despite brisk temperatures in early spring. Great garden Nancy and Garth! I hope you have lots of veggie-loving friends to share your harvest with, because there’s bound to be a lot of it.
And thanks to you, Antonio, for guest-posting. Nancy–now that we’ve seen the framework in spring, send us photos of everything in full swing later in the summer, too!
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Comments
that is THE coolest vegetable garden i have ever seen! almost with an "Incan" look :) i'm assuming those red discs around the tomatoes are the automators? i've never heard of those before. i'm envious of your set up there, i got my first cucumber of the season and bell peppers last night from my small and humble patch
Fabulous! A LOT of initial work... but WOW! What great results!Congratulations on a fine achievemnet!
"tomato automators and Reemay"...ha, it's like a secret language that only serious vegetable gardeners speak! But, thanks to a google search, I'm now clued in.
That's all very impressive planning and construction and the bountiful harvest will make true the words "you reap what you sow"!
Waccabuc, Nancy, what a fancy schmancy address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waccabuc,_New_York
I love seeing people's veggie gardens, everyone has their own magic tricks. Those terraces work well on steep slopes, another technique that will add even more growing area to raised beds is "vertical" planting, many vegetables naturally vine; squash/legumes. One year I planted sugar snap peas so they'd vine on mammoth sunflowers, very sucessful... naturally the birds eventually made quick work of trash can lid sized sunflowers, blue jays are masterful at devouring sunflower seeds... sunflower seeds are safe from birds while growing, the flowers grow inverted with a natural fence of sepals making the seeds inaccessible to birds. Now I can hardly wait to see your crops in mid summer... thank you, Nancy.
I can't help but look at these pictures over and over again. The work, the design, the results.....all truly amazing.
I love the stone steps and path along the hillside! I think I'm going to have to borrow that idea for our new terrace. Thanks, Nancy.
I like how everying is done - especially like the blue "wood"
Nancy, what fantastic results! You have taken a challenging slope and made it so much more interesting and efficient than your basic flat piece of land. The blue"wood" is clever. I didn't want to use pressure treated wood with my own raised beds, for fear of it leaching into my veggies. We have a friend with his own saw mill and he made some timbers for us out of rot resistant locust. I would love to see some close ups of all the wonderful plants tucked in the surrounding hillside. That is a truly magical effect. I have seen the automators and Reemay, but never used them. Do they make a sizeable difference? Your veggie garden is definitely one of the coolest I have seen.
Hi Nancy, I haven't seen anyone using the plastic "wood" for veggie gardening until now. Great use of recycled materials and the perfect color for a garden! The first picture of the stone paths and terracing shows all your hard effort. I really like the plants spilling everywhere on the hillside. I may try the Remay for an earlier crop of tomatoes next year. Thank you for sharing.
Late to the party here, but love the hillside setting and stone work!
Thanks so much for the kind words! The garden is a continual work in progress, and we're always trying new things both in the veggie and ornamental parts. If you're interested in seeing a bit more of it over the last couple of seasons, I've been chronicling it in an occasional blog --
bloomsandlegumes.blogspot.com I don't post as often as I'd like (they keep me pretty busy here at Taunton Press!) but you can get a sense of how the stonework has evolved and they way we've integrated the flower, herb and ornamental plantings. Again, thanks for your comments, it's always so nice to share with folks who appreciate all that goes into this!
Happy harvest,
Nancy
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