Hello again garden gals and guys! I’ve been telling you about the big garden that I am planting and I know you’ve been waiting for pictures so here they are! I call this garden Big Fat Earth…well, because it’s MUCH bigger than my garden at home which is now Little Fat Earth! :o)

I am sooooo excited about everything that’s growing!! We’ve got: Crimson Sweet watermelons; Gold Star cantaloupes; bell peppers; habaneros (really hot peppers); cucumbers (straight eights and a variety that grows in a bush); tomatoes (too many varieties to name but I have cherries, beefsteak types and romas); eggplant; zucchini; onions; Sweet Georgia collards; basil; oregano; and parsley!

Well, enough talk here are the pictures! This first one is the land after it was tilled–5000 square feet of wonderful soil! This was before the gardening began:

This is me and my secret garden weapon beginning to build the mounds:

While we working, the chickens came over for a visit:

Let me tell you a little about what I was doing. I broke the 5,000 square feet up into four rectangles, with each rectangle consisting of about nine to ten long mounds. Each mound row has several plants in it.

I did the rest of the work alone, which is why it took soooo long to finish. OK, this is the tomato rectangle, sans tomatoes (hey….it took a LONG time to just dig those beds!):

Here is a view from the middle of the garden looking at the completed cantaloupe patch (rectangle closest to you) and partially completed watermelon patch:

I then dug another rectangle for peppers, eggplants, onions and cucumbers. I left a nice wide rectangle in between the watermelon and cantaloupe patches to give them room to sprawl and crawl.

Here are several piks of the plants in the ground. Yeah, they are small but they are going to shoot up quickly now that the heat is startin‘ to kick in!

This is one of my watermelon plants:

This is my miscellaneous patch (the cukes, peppers, onions and eggplants although you can’t see the onions in this shot):

(In my best southern drawl) Here’s them Georgia collards:

Here is the watermelon patch:

Another shot of the beds:

Then the mulching began. Tote that barge, lift that bale!

I mulched the melon beds first because, according to my dear hubby, they are the most important crops!

Melon beds completed:

Mulching the tomato bed:

OK and this is me planting sweet potatoes in the bed in between the cantaloupe and miscellaneous beds:

And that’s it folks! It took about two weeks to get it all done and mulched. Now I just have to watch for cucumber beetles and stink bugs and care for these babies til harvest time!

Stay tuned though because I harvested lettuce from Little Fat Earth and I’ll be showin‘ you what’s growin‘ on here on the home front!

Until next time garden gals and guys….

Happy gardening!!!!