The Garden So Far

This year we are trying new things. We have the following areas where we are growing edible things:

In front of the house, on our "boulevard" strip by the curb, we have:
Front Bed 1 (southern-most 8x4 framed bed, humus/soil mix)
Front Bed 2 (next in line, same as above)
Front Bed 3 (northern-most framed bed, this one only 4x4, amended garden soil)

In the front yard we have:
Shade Bed (this old 8x4 framed bed was here, along with another, when we moved in, virtually entirely in the shade due to mature trees to the south of it!)
Areas A, B, C, and D on the northern most side of the "herb wheel" in the center of the yard. (each area is a pie-shaped, small, maybe five square feet area, mostly clay soil with added compost)
Cobb Bench Bed (where an old cob bench was, this is just a mound of existing soil from a former shady raised bed)

Then we have areas in the backyard, sandy/clay areas along the fence - not much room, perhaps about 8 inches wide... we also have many black plastic pots we are growing things in, plus some small areas in between other plants in the front yard where we are growing things (like the onions and garlic).

What is growing:
Well, in Front Bed 1 we have some lettuce still and also beets, which are not yet mature. We have some collards growing as well. The three rows of spinach are done, and about a third of it went to the leaf miners! The rest of it was delicious! I just yesterday planted another few rows of lettuce.

In Front Bed 2 we have broccoli getting mature; the broccoli raab is done; we have four tomato plants and some basil doing well. We also have two tomato plants in the walkway area that are doing ok but are crowded by grassy weeds!

In the Wheel area we have 10 broccoli plants, maybe 8 tomato plants, snap peas, beans, a few peppers and eggplants.

We have onions and garlic maturing.

In the Shade Bed we have some lettuce doing poorly.

In back, we have three tomato plants, plus three more in pots, eggplant and peppers in pots...

I think that is all.

We have a number of fruit trees, nut trees, herbs that are all established in the yard, plus many ornamentals. I don't know how to take care of the trees, other than some basic pruning. I do my best to watch for pests, but otherwise, I need to read up on what an orchardist does! We have:

Filbert hazelnut tree
a young hazelnut tree of the same(?) kind
two apple trees, still very young
two asian pear trees, still very young
a plum tree
a cherry tree, which has yet to produce cherries
a few seaberries
a mulberry tree
some kind of a currant bush
a fig tree
a couple japanese maples
an artichoke plant
a huckleberry bush (the non-fruit kind)
two eucalyptus trees
the big douglas fir tree!
other random trees that are ornamental
rosemary, sage, lavender...
medicinal herbs such as yarrow and some others.

It is really amazing when I write it all down. We love our garden. The only hard thing is it makes growing a lot of vegetables very hard. I am trying my best, but often get so frustrated when I see books on growing vegetables, showing rows and rows of vegetables, without grass or shade in sight! I wish we had so much more land, so that we could have an AREA for the vegetables. I'm really into intermixing things, as in guild/permaculture style, but when it comes to vegetables, it's very hard to plan and execute things in that kind of a setting. You spend more time trying to organize the garden and less time actually planting, or at least that is what happened to me this year.

Vegtables vary in size and needs, and trying to squeeze them in "wherever they will fit" in the yard makes for difficult gardening. You spend more time making sure the grass doesn't encroach on the brocolli than you to tilling your soil or fertilizing your plants.