An Introduction

Welcome to the first post of In My Vegan Garden!  For those of you who followed my previous blog, you'll notice a similarity in titles.  It's no coincidence, believe it or not.  However, in addition to serving as a keepsake from my previous blogging venture (and a smooch to Matt*), the title of this site acknowledges that there is something specific about gardening when one is vegan.

Veganism is not a diet, but a lifestyle, that incorporates compassion throughout every intention and activity.  Living compassionately means perpetually learning.  As I continue my education, I strive to use strictly cruelty-free methods and products in my garden.  I aim to create an outdoor space that provides an abundance of resources for wildlife, as well as my family.

This blog will serve as a scrapbook to track the progress of my gardening history and will hopefully be useful to others.  I enjoy taking photos of the plants and projects around my garden and watching their progress.  If you follow along, you'll see my garden transform in appearance, wildlife-friendliness, sustainability, and profitability.  To me, this is fun, fun, fun!

I'd like to introduce you to my garden!

My partner, Matt, and I bought our house in August 2010.  The outdoor space was full of invasive plants: grass, Himalayan blackberry, laurel hedges, trees-of-heaven, English ivy, and English holly.  These are some photos from the beginnings of our garden.

That's the neighbor's grape vine mixed with blackberry along the back fence.

Although heavily invaded and lacking an existing garden, this outdoor space had some pretty great things going for it.  There was a composite deck and a beautiful old brick wall along the property line on one side.  The best feature?  It's on a double lot!  This is an huge piece of land for being so "close-in" in Portland. 

In the spring, we invested many hours in digging out a half-circle vegetable garden bed. 

This was taken in April 2011, after way too much work pulling up sod!

 In the summer, we realized this large space and our plan of weekly weeding, was just not going to work.

Too many weeds- this was taken in June 2011.

We put in a cedar fence around the yard and planted 12 trees and several shrubs, including this plum tree, which fruited a few months later!

In our vegetable garden, we grew many things including kale, collards, spinach, lemon cucumbers, ground cherries, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and beets.

The dogs enjoyed the bounty too.

Before

After

 We had some beautiful garden surprises, like these irises.

Mostly, we just enjoyed being outside in our space, planning and preparing the garden, and reveling in the enthusiasm with which our Philly city dogs were finally able to run around.

*The original "In My Vegan Life" blog title is a love note to my partner, Matt.  We share an appreciation for Beatles' music and their song, "In My Life," holds significance for us.  What can I say?  I love that guy.