coarse gardening

After a very disappointing effort last summer at the Picardo P-Patch, I decided to carve out some garden space here at the house.

Since where my house sits was part of the original Picardo farm, it’s not like this has never been done before.
Part of the problem last year was that Picardo is too close to home: we could walk to our plot in five minutes, but that meant it only took ten before some of the gardening party wanted to go back home. It is pretty boring if you have the attention span of a 3 or 5 year old. So this year, I turned a 16 x 12 slice of the front yard adjacent to our parking pad, and added 300+ pounds of Zoo Doo last fall and another 500 pounds this spring. That ought to do it.
I have since laid out four rows in one half of the plot with bush peas, sweet peas, salad greens and lupines. I figure if I mix flowers and veggies, I’ll stave off any complaints about the crassness of a garden in the front yard. My back yard is paved, OK exposed aggregate paving, but you get the idea.
Add to that about 10 strawberry plants, two blueberry bushes, some boysenberries, some raspberries, two grape vines and a nectarine tree and we should be OK for fruit. I haven’t yet figured out the other half of the garden plot: I have tomatoes started inside, as well as basil, but I’m not sure what else. Suggestions are welcome, bearing in mind our tricky regional climate.