I saw this "Bad Bedfellows List"  in Troy-Bilt's  Great Gardens, 6th Edition, Garden Hints, Tips, and Techniques, and wanted to share it with all of you. Not all vegetables coexist well when planted side by side, in a friendly vegetable garden.

Have you ever witnessed a friend's or neighbor's "picture perfect" vegetable garden. They are probably incorporating the vegetable garden techniques of crop rotation, successive planting, inter-planting, and oh yes, compatibility likes and dislikes when growing vegetables.

Generally speaking, plants of the same "plant family" will grow and thrive together. Below, is an informal list of vegetables that are "imperfect pairings" and should not be grown in close proximity to each other.

Incompatible Pairings: Asparagus and Garlic Beans and Onions Beets and Beans Broccoli and Beans Cabbage and Strawberries Carrots and Celery Corn and Tomatoes Onions and Peas Potatoes and Tomatoes

If you are curious for more information and a source on plant compatibility, read  Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte.

Glossary Crop Rotation. Rotating your vegetables to a different spot or bed in your vegetable garden. Avoid growing the same vegetable in the same spot each year. An example is tomatoes.

Successive Planting. Planting the same crops in timed intervals, allowing for a longer harvest of one particular crop. An example is lettuce.

Inter-planting. Planting compatible vegetables with different maturing times, space requirements. An example is the Native American Indian technique called "Three Sisters" comprised of planting corn, beans, and squash together.

Please share if you are aware of incompatible vegetable plant pairings. Please comment if you use these techniques for better vegetable growing and yield.

VintageGardenGal Tidbit Thyme....

VintageGardenGal, a garden lifestyle blog, is celebrating it's third anniversary this month! Fab Sponsor, ORGIN DAY SPA in the San Diego, California area, is offering 20% off of services for a limited time, when you mention "VintageGardenGal" at time of scheduling.

Thank you everyone for your interest and support. See you in the garden!

My morning ritual for my hens is complete by giving them fresh treats. Chickens love a treat, and I know my hens, Charley, a White-Crested Blue Polish hen, and Dahlia, a Silver Spangled Hamburg hen, look forward to their special treat each morning. Treats are given in addition to their endless bucket of chicken laying mash and plenty of fresh water.

Remember, what your hen eats will determine the flavor of her eggs. Avoid giving your hens anything with strong flavors such as onion and garlic greens.

Examples of great treats for chickens are fresh lettuces, sorrel, spinach, chard, corn on the cob, and cut up fruit (apples,figs, peaches, strawberries). Giving them a fresh treat is healthy, and occupies them in a good way.

You can train your hens to eat their treats out of your hand, too. It is a great way to bond with your chickens. Please share if you give your chickens special treats. Please comment on what treats you give your chickens.

VintageGardenGal Tidbit Thyme..... Recently, online design and trend magazine, Standard Magazine, Fall 2011, gave VintageGardenGal's  hens and chicken coop a few cameos. Check out their trendy article on diverse chicken coops.

Bonnie and Her Hens Say Hello What, Are You Chicken?

When my husband and I remodeled a year ago, I carved out a perfect office and workshop area in a single car garage. With the addition of our new master bedroom wing, it created this small, private, very intimate garden room which I can look out and access from my office and workshop. I planted a Podocarpus hedge along the north fence on one side, a row of espaliered Silver Wave Camellias along the stucco wing on the south side, and the third side was my very old working garden shed to the west.

In the middle of this garden room, I created a pea gravel square edged with dwarf Euonymus and placed my vintage garden baby fountain smack in the middle. My garden baby fountain, see Everyone Loves a "Garden Baby"  finally had a permanent home, after years of transit traveling around my garden.

The reason I'm describing all of this in detail is because I had an unappealing open door and side of my garden shed which desperately needed some sprucing up. The answer was burlap, the reasonable landscape burlap which has incredible texture, durability, and vintage-like appeal. This is another idea for garden economizing--reasonable landscape burlap as a material. If you don't know about it, you must look for it at your garden and landscape centers. I find my burlap locally at Grangetto's. You can also be creative and re-purpose coffee burlap bags.

I created a small vignette with an old warped wood table, matching symmetrical pots, a pair of young cypress trees for height, and blue-gray shutters for interest and color repetition.  I pulled out my "dusty but trusty" sewing machine, and loosely measured my spaces as everything was uneven. Presto, a working burlap curtain door, and a sweet table skirt for my table. I secured hidden dowels to hang the burlap for my shed opening and table. I also dug out one of my old hooks, and placed it on the side of my shed for a quick way to hold up the burlap curtain door when I needed the large opening.

What a difference, and what beauty in this burlap. Think of this landscape burlap material when you have a project where it might conveniently lend itself. Please share if you use this burlap material already in your garden. Please comment on creative ways you have worked with this burlap.

This spring I created a small herb garden in a quiet, sunny, protected corner next to my barn using vintage wine barrels. I borrowed this concept, modifying it slightly, from Rosalind Creasy's, Edible Landscaping book. This is a terrific book for incorporating more edibles in your landscaping. Rosalind has a whole chapter on "Designing With Herbs."

An "herb garden a la wine barrels," was multi-dimensional for me. My husband, John, and I make wine, and have access to used wine barrels. We have a functional barn, with a trio of wine barrels already planted with blueberry bushes and strawberries on the right side, why not do something on the left with wine barrels, such as herbs. This particular spot is also close to my kitchen, a must for any herb garden.

I used a trio of half barrels from standard wine barrels, cut in half. You can find these types of barrels for sale at home improvement stores such as Home Depot and Dixieline, nurseries, and garden centers. For my second top row, I used a smaller 15 gallon wine barrel, cut in half and sanded along the edges. All wine barrels need to have spaced holes drilled for adequate drainage. I also placed my bottom wine barrels on top of carefully placed river rocks to save the barrels from rotting in the soil, and allowing further drainage.

Since the barrels are big, it is best to use a sterile filler or upside down one gallon size plastic plant containers. It will save you on filling the entire barrel with soil, mulch, etc. I simply placed my second row, and smaller wine barrels securely on the sides of the base half-barrels, using their weight to stabilize them.

Fill your barrels with clean potting soil, almost to the rim of each barrel. You can add an irrigation system if you like. I chose not to. Select your favorite herbs, and plant. I planted chives, winter savory, curly parsley, Italian parsley, tarragon, sorrel, Italian oregano, sage, cinnamon basil, and Italian basil. Choose herbs that you use frequently in your cooking, and a mixture of annual and perennial herbs. Choose some herbs that have a trailing habit, so as they grow and establish themselves, they will spill over the barrels. As time goes on, you can always switch out herbs for new ones when needed.

Add a layer of mulch on top of your soil, and around your herbs.  Newly planted herbs like to be kept moist initially, and water moderately once established.

Please share if you grow herbs to cook with. Please share how your herb garden is set up and designed.

Vertical gardening is a hot trend right now, and an easy way to grow one of my favorite squashes, the climbing Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga. No more space in your garden, try planting your seeds at the base of a fence or an arbor. It is a multifaceted squash, beautiful in it's vining fashion and prolific in it's numerous elongated squash fruit. It's squash quickly can reach 15" and longer.

This Italian heirloom beauty is a great sweet-flavored green summer squash if picked young, or keep it on the vine, and it turns into a toffee colored, slightly nutty tasting winter squash. Seeds are found in the bottom bulbous portion of the squash fruit, hence it is ideal for sautéing or stuffing. It's huge yellow squash blossoms are delicious and can be eaten, too.

I started my Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga squash easily from seed in the spring, and then transplanted it into my garden as thriving seedlings. It takes the heat well, and seems adaptable for most climates. One of the  online  sources  for Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga is Baker Heirloom Seeds.

I've even saved my toffee-colored Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga squash for fall decorations amongst my pumpkins. It's shape adds a nice contrast to round pumpkins, and fall gourds.

Please share if you have grown Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga in your garden. Please comment on your favorite squash to grow.

What do garden bloggers like better than writing about gardening and plants? They like gathering in verdant places like Seattle, The Emerald City, experiencing new gardens. and joining the "sisterhood of garden bloggers" across the country. Okay, there were a few fellas in the mix, too.

This year's garden blogging conference, dubbed Seattle Fling, was a compilation of nearly 80 gifted garden writers who pen their passions about all things gardening. A "Who's Who" of multi-talented voices naming off plant names like a foreign language.

It is a diverse group, not just for the climatic regions they represent, but how they hail their expertise. Some are Generation X, with soon-to-be-released garden books under their belts. Some are forefront blog sensations who can proudly say they have almost a decade of posts and writing in their arsenal. Some are veteran garden writers and speakers, well known in this country's garden circles.

This phenomenon of garden bloggers and writers gathering together magically happens once a year, usually in July. Last year it was in Buffalo, New York, serendiptously coinciding with Buffalo's Garden Walk. Next year's 2012 event is tentatively planned to be held in Asheville, North Carolina.

Garden bloggers attending this year's Seattle Fling 2011, experienced a well-planned and orchestrated itinerary of private and public gardens, retail garden shops and nurseries, a David Perry photography workshop, West Seattle's Sunday morning Farmers Market, and a spoiling by garden-related sponsors.

Garden bloggers were treated to this unique concrete "ruin creation" by Little and Lewis in a wooded private garden. The concrete leaf fountain now moss-aged with water and time, was originally molded from an actual Gunnera leaf.

A trip to the picturesque waterfront Olympic Sculpture Park featuring 21 works by world-renowned artists was both captivating and breathtaking, capturing the essence of Downtown Seattle on one side, and the beauty of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound on the other.

VintageGardenGal wishes to thank everyone involved in this year's Seattle Fling 2011, and embraces her fellow garden bloggers.

It seems like the simplest recipes are the best, especially when it comes to tantalizing summer flavors. I recently found in my "recipe archives" a recipe I had saved from The New York Times, July 2008, by Martha Rose Shulman, Recipes for Health, Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes and Arugula. This recipe is easy, simply delicious, and healthy for you.

If you have an abundance of cherry tomatoes in your garden and fresh basil, you must try this recipe. The secret to this recipe, is combining all of these fresh ingredients-- arugula, cherry tomatoes, basil, garlic, sea salt,and olive oil in a bowl, and let them meld and infuse for 15 minutes. Make your pasta, and then toss with your tomato-arugula mixture. Add your cheese. Heaven!

Cherry tomatoes grow well in my kitchen garden, and often times as volunteers out of the compost. One of my favorites is Sun Gold Cherry Tomato, so sweet, it is like candy.

Please share your favorite cherry tomatoes you like to grow. Please comment on how you like to use your fresh tomatoes in your summer cooking.

 

The Slater Family in Claremont, California, takes First Place in this year's VGG Chicken Coop Photo Contest. This is a classy chicken coop with darling storybook details.

Not only is this an incredibly cute chicken coop, it is well designed. You can easily see where the eggs are collected and where their hens have their enclosed outside area. This city backyard chicken coop is nestled in a quiet spot, beautifully integrated in with their garden.

The Slater's compost their chicken manure for vegetable gardening, and share their eggs with friends and neighbors. Their flock consists of Black Copper & Splash Marans, Red Laced Blue Wing Wyandotte, and a Blue Ameraucana. They have demonstrated beautifully a whimsical design in a small spot, such as a city backyard.

Monte & Donna Partlow on the Olympic Peninsula in Sequim, Washington, are this year's VGG Second Place Winners with their immaculate coop creation, Many Feathers Cottage. This "black and white" chicken coop beauty has been lovingly assembled for their flock of 2 Red Stars, 1 Black Star, and 1 Australop, who are happy to call this their home.

This chicken cottage is charming, but also "state of the art" with electrical wiring, insulation, vinyl flooring and base, and an installed "manure box" under a removable hardware cloth grate for easy cleaning.

It has seamless access to an outside pen, with an exterior door. An operable window and louvered vent provide proper ventilation. Note the hanging thermometer for temperature readings, green roosting bar mounted off of the floor, chain-hanging feeder and water-er, and adjustable height heat lamp. It has all of the "bells and whistles" for keeping chickens.

Tonita Fernandez of Enumclaw, Washington, is this year's VGG Third Place winner with her cleverly re-purposed playhouse turned into shabby chic chicken coop. Her chic coop is a fine example of starting with an existing playhouse, or building and modifying it into a chicken coop with interesting salvaged materials.

She reclaimed this row of incredible chicken nesting boxes from an old barn, which was more than a 100 years old. She decorated her coop with "cleanable" wallpaper, a crystal chandelier, and pink stenciling. A re-purposed milk can conveniently stores her organic chicken feed. By her chicken coop entrance, she has a blooming flower box and fun, chicken-related pieces.

Tonita says, "Fixing up a special little house for the hens is my way of appreciating and being thankful to them for their contribution to our food supply". Tonita has also been involved in rescuing dogs for over thirty years. Her lucky dogs, are given plenty of fresh organic eggs in their diet.

Congratulations to these winners! Your coops are fabulous. Many thanks to everyone who participated, and supported VGG in this contest. I heard from people from all over, who love their chickens.

I'm hoping you can reap ideas and inspiration from the above chicken coops for your own yard or garden. Chicken coops can be individualized, and customized for size and style. Chickens are part of the family, just like any other pets. Chicken coops become an extension of one's garden. Chicken coops can be beautiful, as well as functional and practical. Keeping chickens is wonderful.