Building Garden Beds

In this chilly weather Adam has been building his vegetable garden for the spring. This time last year, the present veggie garden area was nothing but hard sod pasture. Adam was focused on compost-making, sowing wheat, and wishing our winter garden would not drown. It did :(
Our summer veggie garden looked like this:

 This last photo was toward the end of the season. Most of the trellises are leaning and full of only withered vines. The little greenhouse was torn down.

 It was an excellent garden, but ... Adam knew it was only temporary. He's a man with plans!
Here's the garden this morning:

He's redigging all the beds, lining them with metal roofing sheets around the edges, and filling them with shredded leaves on the already-rich dirt. The six posts on the right are where the potatoes were last spring.
He's already full prepped one bed. This was our first tomato bed last year:

He's finished the second bed except for the leaf topping. This was our second tomato bed last year, at the far end of the garden:

Yesterday he joined up two shorter beds (the hoop bed and another bed with a mixture of many plants in it). It's quite long.

It cuts through where the greenhouse used to be, which is one reason the greenhouse had to come down. (He'll build a new one elsewhere.)
And of course we still have our little beds with asparagus (right) and some greens (left).

We plan to grow many tomatoes again next year, limiting the varieties now that we've given them a test run. By the way, I am STILL eating tomatoes from my garden! I brought them in while green, and they've been gradually ripening indoors. The mini-orange variety is the last one to do well. I've saved some seeds from those. It is an heirloom.
Adam's been yapping with Peter about how to grow the tomatoes. Peter worked on a small farm last summer and their method for trellising tomatoes was quite wonderful. They ran a strong cable overhead and then ran cables down to each plant, allowing the plants to vine up the cables. The three photos below are from that farm:

 They also had some irrigation. They grew some gorgeous tomatoes. Sorry the photos aren't really clear about the trellising method, but I didn't realize at the time I should focus on that.

Their plants were quite healthy and straight. They also have employees who spent hours each day weeding!

Adam did a little fire this morning to keep warm and get rid of some burnable junk. We hope to have another good fire when the kids are here over the holidays. It's coming so soon! But until then Adam will be working hard to get the garden picture-perfect ready for planting in the spring. I can't wait to see what the new greenhouse will be like! Soon I'll have those quiet mornings alone in there, messing with lovely soil and tiny seeds. I can't wait!