Welcome Home!

I went on a road trip across the United States last week, and while I'm unwinding and preparing some posts about that, I thought I'd start with the last thing first: our garden bounty from when we returned home:

Garden Update

I wish to preface this post with an explanation: there are no June '09 updates to this blog for several reasons, the big one being that my internet provider is dumb and through their own slowness at restoring their service (modem fried, all they had to do was come over and replace it), lost my business. Anyways...

My garden is growing quite nicely:



We take good care of this one, checking every day to make sure the peas are grasping their wire netting, shading the spinach, pouncing on every weed almost as soon as it pops up (this actually has its downfall as we do not actually know what all our crops are supposed to look like to start, and so we have managed to prematurely pick several plants that were supposed to be there...), and watering all the time (as watering laws allow, of course) - even going so far as to set up an irrigation system:



This picture is out of order from the others in this post, but you can see in this picture also that my boyfriend has set up a potato patch (also with irrigation) in the ditch outside our yard. Our strata doesn't mind this because it means he keeps that portion of the ditch under control, more or less.

On the other hand, we also have our strawberry patch, which we do not tend in any way:



This strawberry patch started in the very corner, in a neat little square. It has a mind of its own, however, and is apparently on a mission to take over the whole yard. The only way we take care of this is that there is drip irrigation there now, and we pick the berries whenever we see them (which is all the time!). We are letting them do their own thing because apparently they can take care of themselves, and if all else fails, at least we'll have delicious strawberries every summer.

Garden Update

Well, the garden is done being built (although the irrigation still needs to be finished), and I've planted everything that can be planted so far (some things need warmer soil, others are going over top the irrigation, and I ran out of some seeds already). I've read a little about companion planting, which is where you plant something near something else, and one plant will benefit the other, either by repelling certain insects or changing the soil in a beneficial way. There is of course a flip-side to this, in that some plants are basically enemies - they pose a threat to each other. For instance, you're not supposed to plant potatoes and tomatoes too close to each other, and there are plenty of plants that can't go near beans because beans add a lot of nitrogen to the soil - too much for some plants to handle.

While I was figuring all this out and planting what I could plant, the boys have been building a shed:



Gosh I hope I don't kill this garden...

Garden Project Day 10

Today I arrived home from work to see the boys busily working on that brick wall. They've gotten quite a lot done! (By the way, this really is Day 10 - I couldn't document day 9 because the boys had covered up their work due to the threat of rain, so I didn't get to see anything). They didn't notice me documenting their hard work in progress:



It's so exciting to see it all starting to come together. Look at the difference in soil quality, too - I can't really get over the stark contrast. Soon to come for this little garden: irrigation, arbours, barrels, trellises, dividers, pots, shelves, and quite possibly solar LED pathway lights. Oh, and plants. We can start planting in a couple more weeks. I'm looking forward to getting some crops in!

Also, a little side note: those drywall mud buckets are so handy. If you ever do a drywall project, keep the buckets. They make decent stepping stools, they are good concrete molds, they are good for mixing mortar in, and they are pretty decent storage containers for tools and supplies as well.

Garden Project Day 8

Sadly, I had to return to work today, so Day 8 featured only the boys working on this, but they got a lot done:




Now that the one side is complete, they have started filling it up with soil, so you can really see it coming together. Only a few more weeks until planting time!

Garden Project Day 7

Day 7 was a day of brick-laying. Progress:

Garden Project Day 6

I had to take pictures this morning of Day 6's progress, since the boys were working into the night on this one. Day 6 was all about preparing the area for the brick work, and some actual brick laying too. Before that, though, we had to prepare the beds for the bricks, by digging a small trench and then filling up the trench to the right height with sand. We also had to prepare the irrigation system enough so that we could lay bricks over top of it:



The boys laid out all those bricks in the dark in a crazy wind storm:



When we were pouring the concrete, we had extra concrete that we put to use by making stepping stones. We poured the leftover concrete into some old drywall mud pails we had, and on Day 6 they were set, so we removed them from the buckets:



Onward to Day 7...

Garden Project Day 5

Secksy.

Garden Project Day 4

Well, here's another day come and gone - Day 4. We got another load of dirt bright and early in the morning, and I had to move the whole pile out of the way - and there was already a pile of dirt in the most convenient spot to relocate it, so I really had my work cut out for me. Here's our progress for the day:



Here's a closer-up shot of all that dirt. My arms hurt every time I look at this picture. Oh well, at least I'm totally beefy now (hahahaha). My only reprieve from the dirt work today was the torture session... err, dentist appointment, I had (which I totally forgot about until they phoned me, wondering where I was). By the way, that's 6 cubic yards of dirt there - 3 from yesterday and 3 more from today. We may yet get more, too...



Here's a close-up of the windy path, with the forms all ready to go.



I'd write more, but my arms have had enough for one day. The pictures are each worth 1000 words though, right? So I hope you enjoyed my 3000+ word post!

Garden Project Day 3

Here's some dirt that should actually host a nice garden. You can see the difference between the new stuff (delivered by none other than the best) and the old stuff. The dump truck was just over an inch too wide to be able to back through the gap between two fence posts, so he had to dump the dirt right there, and I had to move that dirt out of the parking lot and out of the way, because we're getting another load tomorrow (okay, another part load, as the bobcat operator where we got the dirt from couldn't reach any higher, so that's really only a quarter of a load you see there):


Today was a much longer day than yesterday. Yesterday we really only worked on the yard for a couple hours, but today we worked for closer to ten hours. Behold our progress:



You can see I moved that whole pile of dirt over - we'll be using a wheelbarrow to spread it through the whole garden, after we install the path and the surrounding 'walls'. Today we also built half the forms for the concrete we are pouring to make the path.



Tomorrow: concrete and bricks. I've never done any of this stuff before, so it should be a very informative day.

Garden Project Day 2

Today was another day of using the rototiller and scooping out gravel, plus some pricing out of various materials. It wasn't that exciting, but we did solidify our plan a lot more and are ready to add some decent soil.



Check out the size of some of the rocks on top of the wheelbarrow. We have quite the high quality dirt, let me tell you. That is, of course, why we have such healthy looking grass - all the nutrients and stuff. Tomorrow we are getting a dump truck full of good soil, and we will dig out where the path through the garden will be.

Garden Project Underway

You read that right; the same girl who killed chrysanthemums (supposed to be hardy, come back every year) in 2 weeks (brown n crispy), is making a garden. Also, the girl who's been on all kinds of vacations without remembering her camera actually took a 'before' picture:




Ain't she purdy? We keep such a fetching lawn... well, not anymore we don't. Instead we're going to keep a nice vegetable garden. Here's the first afternoon's work:




I didn't work the rototiller, but I was on gravel detail. Here's the fruits of my labour:



Highlights of the day include uprooting a tree and bashing my hand into a rusty bolt while trying to remove another (you can see in the first picture there is a 'wall' structure in the corner - that was supposed to be our compost area). I actually broke a bolt too... I'm so tough... heh...

Onward to day 2...