Veggie Garden Year Two

July 2012

To start, we had really good intentions for our garden this year.  We thought things were moving forward with the house and we could really commit.  We spent one weekend enlarging the bed around the raised beds because we planned to plant SO many veggies that we would need all this extra space.  Well.... we did not get our act together and none of little baggies of careully procurred seeds got started.  I tried not to beat myself up too much about it.  We had been busy with a lot of stuff both house related and personal and Portland was extremely cold and rainy right through June.

I went to the local nursery and got:  four tomato plants, three pepper plants, 2 zucchinis, 1 yellow squash, 1 cucumber, 2 snap peas, 1 pumpkin, and tons of brocolli.   The good news is I planted them all, as well as put some direct seed carrots in the ground.  Josh had planted some onions several months before and these came in as well.  Really that is about all I can say.  We put them in the ground.  There was no watering, pruning or attempt to add any additions to the garden.  I was so dazed I even forgot I needed a second pumpkin plant as a pollinator, so I, in effect, planted a vine. 

The good news, is everything in Portland grows and most of our seedlings took off and running.  As with the year before we started getting a massive zucchini stash, endless tomatoes and so many volunteer tomatoes from the year before we could have started a business. The broccoli never seemed to quite work out, and I only got about 8 carrots out of the deal.  I never planted lettuce, or bush beans, or any other seeds. 

The asapargus came back from the year prior, but was still too small to harvest, my neighbor donated a artichoke plant which thrived and gave us three delicious small chokes and beautiful flowers. Our blueberries and strawberries made plenty of fruit all though so small they were often tart and barely worth picking.  I truly look forward to the summer where I plant and stage my garden so that I have numerous different veggies growing throughout the early spring into late fall.

 

What I can tell you the yard got a lot of attention this year.  By the end of the summer, I had pulled out all the dandelions in the yard (only for 50% to grow back).  I re-edge all the beds, added new shurbs, trees, bulbs, and flowers. The plants from two years prior started to really take off and grow.  The hydrangeas doubled in size as well as did the rosemary and lavenders. Our cherry trees which started at my height were over 10 feet tall. IOur landscaping was defiantely starting to feel more mature and less nursery basic.  It was moving forward!

Raising a Garden... Loose Ends

April 2011

Weekend 4: We still needed to do some finishing work around the beds.   Our goals were to: install a walkway between the beds, make a small pad at the top, lay stepping stones to our front door and create a landscaped border around the beds to connect with our existing landscaping.  We ordered a yard of gravel and had it delivered on Saturday, we bought a bunch of ledger stones from Lowes and got ready to work.
 

The first item on the agenda, was to install several steps on the pathway to navigate the elevation change from the sidewalk up to our house. This proved harder then we thought, all the ledger stones were different heights and widths, we played for several hours trying to get them to stack level and fit inside our pathway.  (Background we, by that I mean myself, wanted these stones because they were natural and would have a nice contrast against the very rigid angular raised beds).  In the end, I will admit this was not a good decision.  We probably should have bought stones that had been cut to standard sizes and that way we could have made the entire thing a little more even. Regrets... always...  We can always come back and replace them later, since the stones could be used anywhere.
 

 

After mortaring (this is not a word) the stones into steps we covered the pathway in weed fabric and poured the gravel in.  We didn't rent a compactor so there was a lot of stomping involved in the process.  Up at the top we realized we were a little short on gravel.  We also realized we were going to need an edger to hold the gravel in place.  We decided to use some existing bricks we had found on the property.  Seriously, every time I dig anywhere I find a brick, weird right?   We also used some old flagstones to make up for the lack of gravel.  This was starting to become a disturbing trend to this project-- let's use all this random stuff we have lying around.

The final step was to soften it up a bit, we bought some lavender and rosemary bushes to put along the right bed.  I picked these because they attract natural pollinators (thanks for the book mom) and stay colorful year around.  We also installed stepping stones up to the front door and inside the landscaping areas to allow us to access both sides of the bed. A little bit of grass seed and we put some of our starts into the beds and called it a weekend.

The moral of the story is this was a little rough.  After three weekends of dirt digging, building, dirt filling and compost hefting we were worn out.  I think the end result is still really successful and I love the beds, but I have a feeling in a year or so you will see another post about changes and upgrades we have made.

You started a blog... You're such a hypocrite!

June 2011

This feels like it should be a very important event in my life.  I have decided.... to start a blog...

This will strike everyone who knows me and more importantly myself as very odd.  First, I like to think of my self as very busy and important. cough.  Clearly, I already have far too much to do. Furthermore, I have openly mocked blogs before. So why the change? 

I have recently been obsessed with tons of house/life/garden/craft blogs.  This has made me realize while I personally offer nothing better or more meaningful to the web then the average person. This will be an opportunity for me to record the weekly trials and tribulations that my home ownership and life take on.  I look back on other people's blogs and I realize how much my house has already changed, my life has already changed, and I guess I feel the need to keep a record. I actually openly hope I have all of three followers, one of them, will of course be my mother, one probably Josh, and maybe some person in Croatia who really screwed up a google search.

So with this as my entrance... I feel the need to start at the beginning.