by soilman Theodore Zuckerman

Here's a look at the south-east corner of the rear garden, looking south-east. This is 2000, some time in August.

The tall, dark, leafy plants in the foreground are soybeans — edamame. They have reached about full-size already, but are not ready to be picked yet. The sunlit, lower-growing plants, behind them, and to the left, are melons — mostly canteloupes, but some galia melons too. It is a 6-foot wide row, about 20 feet long. Behind and to the left of these you can see the now unused trellises — the climbing snap peas have already been picked. I decided not to trellis tomatoes this year. You can see some 1-foot high corn plants behind the trellis, and 2 small compost piles, one of which a remnant of a larger compost pile, to their right. The wooden structure in the foreground, to the left, is the tripod of a sprinkler tower.

You can see most of the side garden, on the right of the photo. There is a 7-foot wide row of canteloupes, galia melons, and watermelons, about 40 feet long.

Below, I zoom in (with photoshop) on that 40 foot by 7 foot row of melons. The darker leaves to the left, closer, are the canteloupes and galia melons; the lighter leaves, to the right, and further away, are the waternmelons.

Below is a view of the east end of the garden, looking east by north-east, in the spring of 2000, showing the east compost pile as it looked when it was first started. This compost pile is about 6 feet wide by 20 feet long by 3 feet high. There is another compost pile started, just like it, on the west end of the garden. Note that in the August 2000 photos, above, most of this compost has been removed, to be used in various areas of the garden. The wooden tripod (behind the as-yet unstrung trellis) is a sprinkler tripod, constructed by soilman. You can see some paper bags, too, still filled with leaves; they haven't had their leaves emptied out yet.

Here is another view of the soybean plants, the edamame, some time in August 2000. In this photo they are hiding the melons, just behind them — but you can see the corn stalks, which are a few feet east of the melon row. This is about 40 stalks you are looking at — producing about 40 ears. We planted about 120 stalks over the year-2000 season. The corn is where the compost pile, shown in the previous picture, used to be. In the foreground are a few salad turnips (left), and some carrots (right).

Here we get a closer look at the corn. About 30 of the 40 stalks are shown. The rest are outside the view, at the left or right. There are 4 rows of 10 plants each. You are looking east by south-east, at the western row (running north and south) in the foreground, running from left to right in the photo, and the other 3 rows are sort of visible behind it. They are spaced at about 15 inches, 36 inches, and 15 inches — you are able to walk between every other row. The stalks are shown hilled-up here (to prevent them from blowing over). Channels will later be made between each row, and outside of the outside rows, to allow these tall plants to be trench-irrigated, rather than be sprinkler-irrigated.

The photo below will give you an idea of what soilman looked like in 1992. Here, he is standing among his corn plants, circa 1992. Note that I was early 6 feet tall at that time — and the corn plants are taller.