Backyard and 'OUR POND' :)

Welcome to the garden part of my backyard.  Last year I read a book by Mel Bartholomew on square foot gardening and decided to abandon my old traditional gardening method in favor of this.  Results are that I have had more produce in a smaller area and less trouble with my garden. 

The big pompom flowers are the onions going to seed from last fall.  There is Zucchini in the front and Cucumber plants on the bamboo on the right (this morning I was looking at them an they have almost reached the top of the bamboo and have lots of little cucumbers in view).

Second square foot planting bed with tomatoes and peppers.  On the left are two small squares with zucchini in them.  In the back is the final hurrah for my cauliflower (I planted them too late and got no produce off them but they sure looked amazing). 

In the side area is the tiered flower bed and the potato box.  Your looking at peppers, strawberries, beets and herb on the top.  The weird uprights are holding a netting to keep the birds from eating everything. Worked well.

Close up of my zucchini plant.  No I don't know why I put this in.  Maybe because I have a spade in the shot.  I have spades all through out the garden.  You'll see them in other shots.  Makes it easier to get rid of weeds.

Patio Tomato.  The reason why we have our garden fenced off is in a couple of blogs back.  Her name is Pippa and she is a omnivore and eats absolutely everything.

Just a quick shot of our pond.  Made it ourselves - you can probably tell.  Love our waterfall.

Looks like Mickey Mouse right - well maybe only in my head.  We made the bowls out of concrete.  and then lined the spillway with a piece of copper.  Took a ton of work but came out wonderful.  I had these two ginormous bowls that I used for food services when I do a church event.  Bought them at a restaurant supply.  We sprayed them with pam and then filled them with concrete (the bowls needed a bit of cleaning at the end but came out fine).  Then we pushed a mold (from some weird pot thing we found at the Dollar store)into the center of the concrete to make the 'Mickey' and scooped out some of the concrete on the side to provide an area later for the spillway.  We had to weigh down the mold since it wanted to float to the top and we used old pieces of 2 x 4's in the area where the spillway was to help keep the shape till it all set.  We left it for 24 hours and then filled the bowls with water and left it for a week.  Then we broke it out and let it set for a couple of days.  We sealed it with a concrete sealer (otherwise it weeps) and glued the copper spillway in place (if you don't have the spillway then the water tends to travel down the side of the bowl).  We have a piece of plastic piping in the side of the top pot, we put it in when we made it, we just need to glue the tube from the pump that you see coming over the top into the piping and we're done.

Enjoy!