Gardening French style

Potager- a French word for the French style kitchen garden. Versailles and Chateau de Villandry have some famous examples. Well, now I have a potager too!! I wanted one for a long time and had no land to make one. We are using some land between the privacy fences behind our home to create my version of this classic French vegetable garden. Our neighbor graciously allowed us to use his property and I will share with him any veggies I manage to grow.

My post of the other day showed some of my many pink gardening implements and they all were used in the creation of my potager. Two raised beds were constructed on the bare land at two different heights with it ending up being about 16 feet by 6 feet. An area I can reach across and walk around and sit on the wooden edges of the beds. A few loads of fresh soil mixed with 6 bags of composted mushrooms and 6 bags of worm poo and voila-- my garden is ready for planting.

I was not able to plant artichoke seeds as it is too late (too warm soon) so I will try those in fall. Right now I have many tomato plants, a few peppers, broccoli, cabbage, herbs, lettuces some strawberries and some pink trailing scopia (for color) carrots and watermelon radishes and pink radishes. I was unable to find my pink tomatoes I wanted to plant. C'est la vie.

For height I added two twisted iron tuteurs in the center of each bed and planted sugar snap peas under them so they will climb up and give some more dimension to the garden plot. The thing about a potager is it should produce a lot in a small space, look pretty, have some architectural element to it and not be too huge.

I think mine meets all those elements. The blue bird house is now on a pole in the one bed and I am thinking of ways to maybe use the area around the fences to grow some morning glories or other climbing flowers. I will show another photo when the plants have grown up more. It is a joy to look at and an easy way to grow veggies.

Have a PINK day!