Home Improvements: Backyard: Herb and Vegetable Garden 2010

Two weeks ago Nate and I were finally able to tackle the backyard - and all its problems. One of the basic changes we wanted to make between last year and this year's layout was the placement and shape of the herb garden. Last year I documented the building of the herb spiral. The spiral had a couple of faults that became apparent after two or three months of use:
1. We had placed the spiral in a part of the yard that was too shaded by the live oak. Most of the herbs planted never got enough sunlight and died after two months of struggling.
2. The plan to use straw instead of soil didn't work. This might be because we have both more rain and higher temperatures. With the exception of the rosemary, nothing planted in the spiral ever rooted well.
3. The squirrels that live in the live oak loved to eat the herbs - and there was no easy way to protect the plants from squirrel invasion.
4. We realized that the spiral was in the way. There's some, but not much, space between the back of the house and the fence. With that huge live oak centered between the two, there's even less walking space. And as Nate and I start figuring out the patio, we realized that the herb spiral would be in the way.

I had started thinking last year of doing something with the beautiful rocks from my parents' lot, a cascading river of herbs. Almost everything planted in the vegetable garden last year did really well, even though it was unusually hot and dry. Knowing that we were going to have to expand the vegetable garden, Nate and I figured that we should move the herb garden somewhere near. We settled on bricks rather than rocks, because we had the bricks from the herb spiral, and once we agreed on a basic shape, we started stacking our bricks on a piece of cardboard.

After a couple of layers of bricks, we started adding in some soil. Once we had a feel for the space with soil, we added another couple of brick layers.

Eventually we decided on three levels - one two bricks tall, one three, and one four bricks tall, with a back wall five bricks tall. We ended up needing more soil than we had anticipated, but are happy with the shape. There's an overall sloping to the structure, which we wanted since it rains so much we didn't want anything to get flooded (some of the plants on the lower level of the spiral got flooded).

We planted the herbs, from the top going down: basil, dill, sage, oregano, thyme, and mint. I'm leaving a little bit of room for something else, perhaps lavender.

The herbs two weeks later:

We only just started on the vegetate garden this weekend. We planted onions and peppers in the front left corner, two rows of okra in the back left corner, two tomato plants in the back right corner, and peas and jalapeno peppers in the front right, along with a pineapple sage that had survived three or four years now. It came back earlier this month almost without either of us realizing it. On Sunday we almost pull it out as we were pulling out weeds and picking up leaves until I broke off a bit and tasted it. I don't know why we haven't used this plant more often - the flavor is earthy but definitely sweet.

The garden layout: