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January 22, 2008

A Potager Garden

When we first moved to our current house the section was bare, and the soil consisted mostly of clay. After throwing around some ideas we decided to design a potager garden.

A potager is French and it’s a raised bed garden, normally for vegetables and herbs. Hubby built three box squares out of timber and filled them with good quality soil. We made a decorative path between them so it’s easy to plant, water and harvest and not long ago, Mr. Munro planted a hedge of shelter trees because it seems to be windy where we live.

Mr. Munro spends hours out in the garden and periodically, I have to go out an inspect his latest improvements and crops. This year we’ve had fresh potatoes, lettuce, zucchini, red onions, leeks, green beans, basil, radishes, beetroot and the tomatoes are starting to ripen. It’s so handy just wandering out to the garden to pick whatever vegetables we’ve decided to have for dinner.

Here are some photos of Mr. Munro’s garden:

Mr. Munro's garden

Mr. Munro's garden

Mr. Munro's garden

I have to confess I’m a bit tired of zucchini but I’m really enjoying the green beans and can’t wait for the tomatoes to ripen so I can make fresh tomato sauce to have with pasta. Do you grow your own vegetables? What do you grow? And if you don’t have a garden, what is your favorite vegetable to eat?

15 Comments

  1. Barrie Summy

    Wow! Your garden looks fantastic! My husband, for some very strange reason, doesn’t like raised gardens. But, now that I’ve seen how great yours looks (not to mention the fact that I live in an area with lousy soil), I’m standing my ground (pun intended!) next summer! Do you guys have earth boxes in NZ? And have you tried zucchini bread to use of some of those zucchinis?

  2. Shelley Munro

    Barrie – I wasn’t sure what an Earth box was and googled it. No, I haven’t seen these in NZ.

    I haven’t tried zucchini bread. It sounds interesting. I’ve seen a chocolate zucchini cake that looked good. If I wasn’t trying to cut down on my eating to compensate for Christmas I’d be trying it in a flash.

  3. Paz

    No that I’m learning to cook, I would LOVE a garden of my own with all those good stuff you have in your garden. You’re right it’s great to be able to walk out back and pick what you want, instead of making a trip to the supermarket and trying find the freshest product in the bunch. Great job with your potager garden. Great photos, too.

    Paz

  4. Jenyfer Matthews

    I’ll bet the zucchini bread would freeze well – my banana bread freezes wonderfully and when you zap it in the microwave it’s just like it came out of the oven. Mmm…

    I have a large balcony only and am growing basil and cherry tomatoes at the moment. The plants are very large and I’m just starting to see some tomatoes now.

  5. Anna J. Evans

    Wow! That’s so inspiring. I’ve always wanted to have a garden, but I can’t seem to keep kids and plants alive at the same time, lol. But maybe this summer the hubs and I can try a small garden. I love fresh zuchini! I don’t know if I’d ever get tired of it, lol.

    Anna J. EVans

  6. Shelley Munro

    Paz – there’s nothing nicer than fresh herbs etc. You could probably plant a pot with herbs to go on a window ledge or something like that. Image fresh basil with your cooking!

    Jenyfer – I hadn’t thought of freezing it. I’ll have to hunt out a recipe. I sent hubby off to work with surplus zucchini today. That got rid of some of them.

    Anna – hubby does all the gardening since I only like to look, but when we were kids our parents let us have a little patch each to grow radishes and quick growing things like that. I remember having lots of fun. Maybe you could try that with your kids.

  7. Amy Ruttan

    MMmm Fresh veggies. No I don’t have a garden … yet, it’s in the plans. My backyards infested with rabbits though.

    Also kinda hard to garden with three feet of snow … you’re so lucky to be in Summer right now. I want Summer BACK!!! :mrgreen:

  8. Lillian Feisty

    Wow! I’m jealous! I used to have an amazing garden, but our new house doesn’t have the setup. I used to spend about 25 hours per week in the garden! I had about 20 rose bushes!

  9. Shelley Munro

    LOL, Amy. We don’t have that problem with snow here. In winter Mr. Munro makes me eat lots of cabbage :eek:

    Feisty – I love roses. My mother always used to have roses but we had a possum problem and they’d come down from the bush in the middle of the night and strip away all the new growth. My sister was telling me they still have a problem with possums and that they’d developed a liking for lemons but only the peel. My sister wakes up in the morning and she has all these balls of pulp on her tree.

  10. Estella

    Great looking garden!
    We do grow a garden. Beets, carrots, green beans,radishes, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, zucchini squash abd yellow crook neck squash.
    My favorite vegetable to eat is cucumber.

  11. Gabriele

    I have a balcony where I grow herbs in pots – my thyme is spectacular, huge, aromatic, and grows even in winter. I have Russian mint, too, majoran, sage, rosmarin, lavender, and a few exotic ones people keep telling me won’t survive outdoors in Germany. :razz: During summer, I also get some tomatoes.

  12. Shelleys' better 1/2

    Amy, I would place some vegies in a casserole along with the rabbits!! Lean meat and fresh vegetables, couldn’t be a healthier meal. Went out to the farm last weekend but there is a shortage of rabbits [which is a good thing] so my pot is a little empty. Don’t tell Shelley I visited her blog, she’s a vegetarian.

  13. Shelley Munro

    Caught you red-handed, Mr. Munro :lol:

  14. Mary

    LOL at Mr. Munro being caught red-handed :)

    As to the zucchini, you could always do what they did in the teeny little town where I grew up. Nobody ever locked their car doors & everybody planted too much zucchini, so in summer you often came out of a store to find zucchini had mysteriously appeared in your back seat. :)

  15. Shelley Munro

    Mary – thanks for stopping by. LOL – that’s a real incentive to keep my car locked!
    Knowing my luck for attracting zucchini a box left by my car would remain fully intact until I returned. :grin: