Where the garden's are today (Part 2)

As I have commented before, I have two gardens other than my own where I am assisting the homeowners with their endeavors.  The one I am going to speak about today is a garden that a coworker and his wife have.  There have been a few attempts to garden by them but, like most of us, they lead very busy lives.
So, my coworker built fences to keep his five dogs out of the beds.  Once that was done, we tilled the area where they had previous gardens and another area where no gardening was ever attempted.  I kept their expectations low on the new area givne the state of the ground.  I told them we would appoach that area as a developmental area this year.  Here is a picture of the area where they had a garden for a couple of years.

And here is the new gardening area.

                                             

In the exsisting area, we planted tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.  I used the fence (which I cannot take any credit for) as supports for the cukes as seen below.  They will find the fence and then begin to climb it.  That should make for a nice green wall for the garden.

.Here are two pictures of the garden bed as it looked on this past Thursday.

I'll take more pictures when I go over this week to put down fish emulsion fertilizer on all the plants. The plants are beginning to react to the hot weather we have been having and seem to be growing at a pretty good pace.  
What we ran into with the new area is a lot of rocks and general debris that was buried.  Seems there was a garage in this area and the owners grandfather would either leave some stuff on the ground or buried it in place.  Rocks abound but that is part of the territory when opening up new plots.  Still not really sure what is under the surface but the overall soil health is poor at best.  I was planting a watermelon plant and ran into a string of red bricks.  So far, we have found about 10 but I know there are many more in this area given it lines up with the area of the garage.  I'll eventuall pull more of them as they are in great shape and very old.  Can't find this quality of brick anymore.
I've planted 4 paste tomatoes and a set of beans all of which are growing.  I also planted watermelon and a squash plant.  But, it seems, a rabbit had them for a quick snack.  Along with these, I planted canteloupes along the fence to again use the fence as supports as seen below.  This is a little older picture than the others.  I'll be updating these in the next week or so.

It's been quite interesting to take a yard that has never been gardened and see the work involved all over again.  After a few years, the garden can kind of fall into a yearly routine.  Part of the issue is that I am also maintaining my garden, this one and another garden along with working a full time job. I can see the potential of doing this type of stuff full time but realize it will have to wait until I retire. In the meantime, I have enough to keep me busy.
What is rewarding to me is to speak to these people and realize that they are interested in growing their own vegetables the organic way like I do.  It's extemely rewarding to pick a quart bag of buttercrunch lettuce, a fresh cucumber and a skad of beans like I did this morning and know exactly what was used to grow them besides the tremendous freshness component.  And they are looking to me and my expertise to guide them to this type of experience.  I just don't understand how one would not have a garden but then again, that's just me. The other gardener I am working with is a long time gardener who had begun to give up on gardening this year given his age.  I have spoken with him and helped him get his garden started this year. Now we are discussing what we we are going to do at the end of the season to make the soil better and the no-till approach that I have recently adopted.  He didn't want to give up the gardening, he just wanted to give up the work involved.  Organic, after all, is actually less work than the old style row gardening practices of the past.
Well, that's all for now.  I need to kick back and relax the rest of this day.  It's a beautiful, hot afternoon to just breathe.  Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!