Raised Beds: After the First Year

This is what the planting beds look after the winter. Everything fared well. I have a minor repair to make to one of them and most of the herbs died this year but otherwise, I am happy with things. I started clean up in this area of the yard yesterday - it seems like it is the first really nice day we've had on a weekend this entire year.

I added a bag of soil and humus to the raised bed before re-planting and will probably do the same for the others. I still haven't figured out what I am going to do with the rest of the beds this year but will likely do some of the same items we did last year: cucumbers, zucchini, maybe some tomatoes and greens.

I also started pulling out the hops this year. A lot of folks will lament this. I am trying to find another place in the yard where I might put them. Perhaps I will start a trellis in another part of the yard. They are starting to spread in a big way and are even lifting up the patio stones. I think that became the last straw for me. I also have always wanted something flowering on the pergola. The neighbor thinks I should put in grapes. I planted a bunch of perennials last fall and they are all coming up again so I am trying to get the area near the patio to be a perennial garden as well. We'll see how successful we are.

Raised beds

For years, I have wanted to organize the garden amd build raised beds.  Instead, I have had no garden and the back corner of the yard has turned into the world's largest compost bin.  This weekend, I tried to fix that. 

I already planned on taking on this project but my mother in law bought me a bunch of heairloom seeds and this pushed me to get them in the ground quickly so I spent yesterday in the yard. 

I constructed the beds out of 1x4 and a bunch of 4x4 I had laying around as scrap.  I think if I were to take this on again, as I think I will in a few years when these come apart or rot, I will use 2x material.  The 1x had a lot of warping and was hard to keep plumb and even.   

They are a little rustic-looking and not perfectly even (I guess aligning them with my crooked sidewalk wasn't such a great idea) but they are a vast improvement. 

I transplanted all of our herbs into one of them and planted seed in the others.  We have a couple heirloom variety tomatoes and some cucumber, pepper and lettuce. 

I still have a lot to do in this area.  I need to clean up all of the old pots and stuff by the fence and put down the pea gravel that I bought for the paths around the bozes.  I also want to do several large containers of mint, lettuce and other plants to fill the area.  It will certainly change over the next few weeks.

A weekend to relax. Well, sort of.

It was my birthday this weekend so I didn't do too much around the house.  I have a three week plan to "finishing" the yard.  This week is the herb garden, which I finished.  We put in curry, rosemary, basil and already had lavender, oregano and two types of thyme.

My daughter got into the gardening act, insisting that we have a strawberry plant.  She also got a begonia and a small flower from our visit to Day in Our Village.   The next two weeks will be spent finishing the baskets and then planting the vegetable garden.

There is a bit of action in the garden.  We got some dark red sunflower seeds and scattered them around.  They are coming up and should be a nice addition to the back yard.

I plant the wash tub with marigold seeds every year.  I then transplant these up front, once they are more mature.  They are all sprouting and looking good also.

Since it was my birthday, I was able to get myself a gift from my mom and dad.  I made an addition to the back yard.  I got a hammock that now suspends between the two posts of the pergola.  You have to move the table out of the way to use it but that's fine with me.  It will keep others out of the back yard when I am trying to relax.

The view is pretty great too as I can sit and watch the hops grow.

How does your garden grow?

If you visit this site often, you'll realize that I am kind of an accidental gardener. I try things out that I see on TV or read on the web. I am very interested in plants and organic gardening so I am always trying to learn something new to try out at home. I see gardening as a kind of therapy. I am usually out getting dirty early in the morning or after work if it isn't too hot.

I realized that up until now, I usually post about the garden without including a lot of info - mostly pictures. I figured it was about time I departed from that and shared some of my successes and some of my problems (usually occurring simultaneously).

I don't use chemicals in the yard. I have started putting down blood meal and I use my own compost but that's about it. I hand weed, use a push mower, and get water from my rain barrels. Most people think I'm crazy. I don't consider myself to be on the forefront of anything "green" and frankly, I think it is laziness that keeps me gardening this way. I would loose track of chemicals and fertilizer and such and probably end up killing myself or my plants. Same with the motorized gardening equipment. Shovels are dangerous enough for me. I am guessing that the folks before me did something magical to the soil in this place because it doesn't seem that I need to do much for the plants to do well.

My yard has about four main areas where I garden. The easiest (and most rewarding) part is the raspberry border along our back fence. I cut this flush to the ground in November and then in the following year, I get two crops of raspberries. One will come in another week or so and then a second will arrive in early September. Besides embellishing the fence this year, I don't do much in this area of the garden.

I also have a vegetable garden and then two flower garden areas (one in the back and one in the front). The vegetable area is usually not too exciting: squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and this year we have peas and will soon be harvesting garlic. I pulled up our first garlic today and it still isn't ready but I'll use it in pesto tonight. You allow the garlic to flower but fold the flowers back so that energy can be diverted to the bulb. The flowers are also tasty in pasta dishes. I use a red variety (see how the stem is kind of pink) of garlic and plant cloves about 9" apart. Each clove will produce a full head of garlic.

Next to the veggie garden, I tried something new this year: potted lettuce. I have bib, romaine, kale, and chard all growing in pots. The optimistic side of me said that this would help keep it away from the rabbits. I'll let you know how it all does. So far, after two weeks, it all seems happy.

Across the yard is a small herb garden: basil, rosemary, and nasturtium. We have a mint patch that we are letting go crazy as well. Basil does extremely well in our yard. These 12 plants will produce more than enough pesto for the summer.

I compost. I am starting to think that I am not a very good composter. I put all my yard waste and all of my veggie waste from the home as well as coffee grounds and egg shells into the compost heap. I layer this and then turn it every week or so. The reason that I am calling my compost skills into question is that I am starting to get some odd (nice, but odd) plants around the garden. Most notably, I have squash plants sprouting in every area of the yard. I also have a few strawberry plants popping up and now tomatoes. I was told that seeds would not survive in the compost but I must be doing something wrong because they are obviously surviving. I am going to pull most of this stuff out but I am going to let the squash in the front yard go to see what happens - it might even look nice up there. If anyone has any idea what I'm doing wrong, please let me know. Oddly enough, no weeds have started sprouting up this way - only fruits and veggies. So far, I consider this a minor nuisance but maybe it will have it's own rewards later on.The back yard flowers are primarily perennials that I planted last year and the year before. I am particularly proud of the hollyhocks. They were started from seed and got about 2 feet high last year but never flowered. This year, they will top out above 4 feet and are about to flower. The anticipation is killing me. I moved the lilac next to them but today I dug it out and moved it away because the hollyhocks were getting too big and stunting the lilac. I hope to eventually transplant a clump of these out front. When they bloom, I'm sure I'll be bragging about them on the site.

I also have two trellis with clematis on it and hanging baskets. A funny thing happened this year: one of the clematis got blown off it's stem in the spring. A brand new plant came up but it seems healthier than the one that was there before and fuller than the one that did not get damaged. These are starting to flower. This is a pic of the one that got no damage. The one above is the other. Should I cut these back every year? I need to do some research.The front yard saw a big transformation this year. I designed it to be like a woodland path. I know, there's no woodlands but hopefully it will eventually grow up and feel more "wild". Many of the plants are left-overs from wildflower seeds and perennials (blue bells, forget-me-nots, lilac, black eyed susans, etc.) I put in last year. I am still trying to identify everything. If anyone knows what those pink phlox-like flowers are, please let me know. They have kind of a furry top with great flowers. These and the forget-me-nots are everywhere but I would like to control them a little better so they look a little more deliberate.

This year, I also started five new patches of flowers. They are all doing well and if the hollyhocks are any indication, these will look great in another year. One patch is echinacea, another foxgloves, another is lupins, one sunflowers, and finally (and I know I will catch hell for this from some of the housebloggers) I planted a patch of morning glories up front to grow up one of my columns on the porch. For background on the morning glories, just click the keyword in the sidebar and you can read the controversy. I saved seeds from the ones in the back. I still maintain that these morning glories are pretty spectacular and unlike any I've seen - they should look great out front. If anyone wants some morning glory seeds, let me know.

The intent of the front yard design was to have it expandable to the entire front yard and to create a fun place for my daughter to play and an easy way for me to tend the garden. It is fun and hopefully will continue to grow along these lines striking that odd balance of "wild" and "planned". I hope that I can do this without buying any more plants though. Between the front and the back, I think I have over 20 different varieties of perennials - plenty to fill the yard, I think. Right now, it is not very photogenic but it looks good in person and I bet it will look great in a few months.

Attack of the Cucumbers!!!

I should have known better than to try and grow squash and cucumbers in such a confined space. What I didn’t expect was our cucumber plant attacking all of it’s neighbors. I am still not sure it is worth it but I re-located a tomato plant and am trying to train our cucumber to not destroy its neighbors.One of my problems with gardening is that I can’t leave well enough alone. After transplanting the tomato, I decided to move a few other things around as well. I know this is generally not a good idea with the warm weather we have been having. I created an actual herb garden by moving all the herbs to one corner. I also tried to move all the sunflowers to one location (the random sunflower here and there just looked a little crazy). I’ll let you know in a week if any of these plants survive.
Work on the bedroom also continued slowly. I only spent a few hours but am almost finished with the closet door casing and molding. All I have left is a 4’ section of baseboard, the closet door and the windows and I am done stripping in this room. If I squint hard enough, I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.
During nap time I constructed a fold-away work table out of an old bi-fold door from the basement and got my garage a bit more organized. I also started on the screen door for the basement. I am making it out of 1x2 cedar strips. It is actually pretty simple and makes me think I can do my own window screens… …hmmm, but what about the storm windows?