Photos of My Vegetable Garden Taken by Kevin Sharkey
My gardens at Cantitoe Corners are thriving.
Everything here at my farm is looking so gorgeous this year - from the Cotinus and all its plumes of billowy hairs to the incredibly beautiful and fragrant roses to the lush green foliage of all the trees and boxwood. Many of you have commented on how much you enjoy seeing photos of my farm this time of year. Earlier this week, my dear friend and EVP Director of Design at Marquee Brands, Kevin Sharkey, came to the farm and took a series of interesting and artistic images of my new half-acre vegetable garden just bursting with spectacular growth. It’s always fun to view the familiar through someone else’s lens - enjoy his pictures.
And be sure to visit Kevin’s Instagram page @seenbysharkey to see more of his photographs.
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- Kevin entered the garden from the southeast corner. You may recall, this enclosed space was my donkey paddock for many years. We created this gated entrance when we transformed it into a vegetable garden, so I could enter from both sides – on foot or by Polaris.
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- Kevin captured this image from the top of the garden looking down its length. This garden has more than 40 beds. My head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and I planned everything out on a map and made sure we accounted for every crop we wanted to grow.
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- This year, the vegetables look utterly amazing. These are just three of the broccoli heads – each one more perfect than its neighbor. I picked one not long ago and it weighed two and a half pounds!
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- Usually, everyone looks for the beautiful head in the center, but its leaves are also quite pretty. Kevin took a side photo of our cabbages.
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- And here is a view from the top. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green.
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- From this angle, this red cabbage looks like a rose just beginning to unfurl.
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- Kevin took this photo to show the giant leaves growing out of the garden box. We attribute so much of the growth to the excellent soil I have here at the farm. Not only is the base soil well fertilized by the donkeys, but we also used a mix of new soil and my own composted soil made here at the farm.
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- Here is another view – we’re all just so pleased with how well everything is growing.
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- This is a Napa cabbage – the best-known variety of the Chinese cabbages with large, full-size heads. These heads are oblong with green, crinkly leaves on the outside and creamy yellow in the center.
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- The cauliflower is just so pretty and so very large. Most are not ready just yet, but this one does look pretty close.
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- And look at our bed of kale! It has such lush green color.
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- Kevin walked to the center of the garden to one of our longest beds. This one is planted with asparagus. We won’t be harvesting these for at least three years as asparagus needs all that time to develop, but after that they will produce an abundant crop of spears spring after spring.
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- We planted leeks, shallots and onions back in late April – this is another interesting vantage point showing growth.
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- And these are the leaves of our artichokes. Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which will emerge from the center of the plants. At the ends of every bed, we planted all kinds of herbs.
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- Here is a bed of spinach. We planted the spinach close to the end, so it is easy to access for my morning green juice.
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- Some of the beds are smaller. This one is filled with basil – both green and purple.
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- In another center bed, along this trellis we put up, are lots of peas – one section for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and another for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from pests and diseases.
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- At the north end, loads of cilantro and parsley. Everyone always asks me why I grow so much and what I do I use it for. I always love growing an abundance of vegetables for my daughter, Alexis, and her beautiful and vegetable-loving children. I use the produce for cooking shoots and various photography shoots here at the farm. I love sharing it with my friends and those who work so hard here at Cantitoe Corners. And don’t forget my chickens, geese, and peafowl – they all love delicious, fresh, and organic greens too.
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- Kevin took many photos showing how large this garden is, but also how well it was divided and built. These beds in the foreground may look empty, but they are just freshly seeded. We always plant in succession here at the farm, meaning we plant seeds every few weeks during the season, so there is always something ready to harvest.
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- I love visiting this garden whenever I can. This is the north gate. It is the closest entrance to my stable. Thank you for taking these beautiful pictures, Kevin. I’ll be sharing some of the bounty with you very soon.
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