I garden smack in the middle of Seattle, but sometimes I seriously consider moving to the country and planting a huge vegetable garden. Luckily, I can keep my city garden and live out my country dreams by reading Red Dirt Ramblings—Dee Nash’s wonderful blog that chronicles her ever-changing one-acre garden in Oklahoma. Dee just ordered 37 chicks (!) and she grows a really astonishing variety of vegetables in her classic potager-style garden. I asked if she’d be willing to give us a tour of her and she most graciously obliged.

[Above: My youngest daughter, Bear (what I call her on the blog), holding her first crop of radishes for the year.  She likes plants which can be pulled from the ground best: potatoes, carrots, radishes and turnips.  No interest at all in lettuce or kale.  In fact, all of my children have liked this "buried gold" best.]

This an overview of the back garden.  The four long beds at the end of the garden were for vegetables, although more and more flowers try to creep in.  I’m thinking of making a brand new garden up on the hill.  I have a plan in mind, and the sun would be better.  My trees have grown over time, so that they cast more shade on the garden than they once did.

Spring was best in my garden this year.  The heat didn’t arrive until June, and then the temp hovered around 107 degrees F for two weeks straight.  All the blossoms on the tomatoes dropped, but because they were indeterminate, they produced later in the season.  Lucky for us, we have a long growing season.  My climbing beans failed to produce, and with my mother in the hospital for two months, nothing was normal for the garden.  However, we ended up with carrots, a few beans, lots of late tomatoes, eggplants, some squash (I had rot problems due to too much rain, too fast), but no potatoes because I tried something new, and it didn’t work.  I planted them in the compost pile, but it dried out in summer, and wasn’t near enough to a water source.

This is just a pretty sugar snap pea blossom photo.  We have a difficult time with true sweet peas in the spring, but this little blossom gives me almost as much cheer. Plus, the peas which came later were very, very sweet.

‘Giant Belgium’ (above) was my best producing tomato.  The plant was huge by season’s end, and it just pumped out the fruit.  Sadly, the taste was bland.  I still ate them.  I really liked ‘Royal Hillbilly’, ‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘Carbon’, ‘True Black’ ‘Brandywine’, ‘Sungold’ and a hybrid, ‘Super Fantastic.’  I plant this hybrid every year.  As for cherry tomatoes, I can’t beat ‘Sungold.’  Usually, they don’t even come indoors.  I eat them as I work.

This is a ‘Carbon’ tomato (I think!), which is an offshoot of ‘Cherokee Purple’.

My vegetable garden is completely organic, so it has lots of insects, both good and bad.

All photos in this post are copyright of Dee Nash. To see more pictures of her garden, visit Red Dirt Ramblings!