I have not managed to do much writing this spring. That’s been a big frustration amid what has otherwise been a pretty great time. One of the places where the time has gone is our gardens. I’ve never spent so much time gardening in my life. And, boy, is it satisfying to complete a big project along the way.
Two years ago, my backyard looked like this:
An ocean of grass with a weird circle in the middle. I decided I wanted to turn the whole thing into a circular set of raised beds for vegetables. I drew some diagrams. I marked off the area. I decided it wasn’t realistic to try to do the whole thing at once. So, I started off by killing off the weeds on half of the area:
Then I went to work on building the raised beds. More diagrams. Buy the materials. Saw stuff. Stain stuff. Stain stuff again. Lay it out. Assemble.:
Which brought us to last spring. We filled the two beds with dirt, planted some vegetables…and nothing much happened. It was a terrible growing season where we live. We wound up with a handful of cherry tomatoes. One watermelon the size of a walnut. The carrots never sprouted. The highlight of the year came when an invading force of baby bunnies forced their way past the barriers we’d put in place and just would not leave. I stormed. I yelled. I loomed. They hunkered down just like mom told them to, pretending to be stones. I had to go get a broom and gently nudge them to show them I knew they weren’t stones. Sadly, we have no pictures or video.
I posted a few weeks ago about how this year’s work on the vegetable garden was going. Put the deer fence up. Tacked it down. No rabbits this year (I hope). No deer (I hope). I do have a mole, but I’m not so worried about that. And I now have a completed garden that looks like this:
Which I’m pretty darn happy with. Four beds up and running this year. In the SW section:
We have tangerine pimiento sweet peppers and brandywine heirloom tomatoes. In the NW bed:
We have scarlet nantes carrots, Detroit dark red heirloom beets, and early moonbeam watermelons. Today I moved six of the dow purple podded heirloom snap pole beans into the area at the back right. In the NE bed:
We have rhubarb and Oregon giant snow peas. We apparently put in the snow peas too late, so they might not yield much. Next year. And I moved eight of the pole beans into here behind the snow peas at left. In the SE bed:
We have peacevine cherry tomatoes, Genovese sweet basil, Blue Lake bush beans, and the dow purple podded heirloom snap pole beans. If they grow well, we’re going to be inundated with beans. I planted a lot and they all sprouted, which is why I transplated fourteen of the pole beans today. I just yanked the extra bush beans since I had more of those to begin with and had run out of places to move things.
All of our seeds are certified organic and came from Seeds of Change.
Yeah! And whew!
Is that a powder coat finish on your lawn furniture. If it is, how long do you expect it to last. As opposed to spray paint. Does it have much fading.
I don’t know what it is. They came that way when we bought them at a yard sale two years ago. Some rust is starting to creep in. I’ll need to clean and repaint them soon.