The night after we were done repainting the guest bathroom (in late March) Hubs said he wanted to tackle the disgusting patch of mulch in our back yard:
Once upon a time, the owner of the house had a metal playground there. The tenant before us had it removed (except for the spikes, which were fun discoveries for Hubs!) and then we inherited this giant eyesore. We mainly used it to store the branches that fell off our behind neighbor's tree during thunderstorms, which Lucy would then break off and drag through the yard at top speed. So, in essence, we had turned it into an accidental dog playground.
She may be a twig-obessed little psycho, but she's OUR twig-obsessed little psycho! Anyway, Hubs had big plans to turn it into an elaborate vegetable garden.
Yes! LITERAL PLANS. I tease him for this stuff mercilessly but it always ends up paying off. He wanted to do square-foot gardening (he even did research) because underneath the mulch and weed cloth was SAND. Lots and lots of SAND. We think maybe before it was a mulch playground, it was a sand playground. I don't know if you've ever tried to plant stuff in sand, but usually it doesn't go very well. The first order of business was to remove the old withered weed cloth (cloth used to block weeds from growing) and the mulch. And of course the branches Lucy loved so much.
He had Lucy's help, but not mine. There were tons of critters in that mess and I didn't have sneakers at the time.
Mostly she prowled up and down the rows, chasing lizards and making a huge mess as he raked.
Then she was exhausted by all that work so she went to lay in the shade. Fast forward past his dad moping around "helping" Hubs get all of this stuff into bags (I think he just prolonged the process but it got done nonetheless) and Hubs pulling up all the wooden boards around the perimeter and we had...
Bags and bags of mulch! Bags everywhere!
The wood itself was completely useless from weather and bug damage. Even if we'd wanted to keep it, we would've had to replace it.
But Hubs dug out the trenches a little deeper so that we could install a rabbit fence.
Lucy did her best to disrupt this process. During this whole garden-improvement process we had to bathe her probably six times, she got so filthy. You my have noticed that our yard is fenced in on all sides anyway... we have no real danger of rabbits getting into our garden. However, we do have these two to contend with:
The one on the right is Hubs' brother's rescue dog, named Parker. We're not sure what he's mixed with, but he definitely has Boxer in him, and those dogs are historically stupid. This dog is no exception. He may be only part-Boxer, but he's full-stupid. When he gets excited, he jumps into walls. He also pees on the floor if someone gives him too much attention. He takes to running back and forth through the yard at random, often right through the mulch garden. And no matter how many times we yell at him, he still tries to eat chicken wings out of the garbage... even though it has a lid. Lucy is mine and Hubs' dog, well trained and obedient, but a labrador nonetheless, and they are VERY curious and hungry creatures. So we knew our second order of business was building some kind of fence around the garden to keep these two equally destructive monsters out of the vegetable garden. After much research (Hubs had dreams of a white picket fence with a gate, which were dashed when we priced it out) we settled for a simple rabbit fence, two feet tall, with the option to upgrade once the garden was established and flourishing.
This was a day that started out great, so we had taken my siblings down to his brother's neighborhood pool, hence the bathing suit. It had become overcast, though, which is perfect putting-up-a-fence weather. That's why he's in swim trunks though. And yes, I did put down the camera to help him with this process.
The finished product! The old wood was stored there, waiting to get sawed into four-foot sections so that the yard pickup guys would take it. We also had it inside the fence to keep Lucy away from it, since she loves to chase lizards and we weren't wild about the huge metal spikes sticking out at random from the pile.
Different day, different swimsuit. Square-foot gardening consists of having smaller raised boxes of soil so that they're easier to maintain, so Hubs got simple wooden boards and constructed boxes, then stapled new weed cloth to the bottoms to discourage the growth of weeds.
Voila!
Necessary to square-foot gardens are these three components: Vermiculite, Peat Moss, and three or four different kinds of compost. This results in a garden that is (supposedly) impossible to over-water.
Montage of Hubs mixing up his three kinds of compost! (We went to all of the local hardware/nurseries and only found three different kinds of compost, what gives?)
Montage of Hubs adding in the peat moss and mixing it up!
The packaging for the Vermiculite is VERY ADAMANT that you should not breathe in their product. Why we can't breathe in something that we use to plant edible foods, I'll never know. But since Hubs just lost his mother to a rare form of cancer that scientists still can't agree has a cause (they say there is no evidence that leukemia has genetic, dietary, or environmental causes) I wasn't about to make fun of him for keeping toxins out of his lungs. No matter how silly he looked with his t-shirt tied around his face.
Montage of Hubs putting the mixture into the first garden! This would later turn into my herb garden (it's the only one I planned, planted, and maintain myself) and he went on to build another box that day. Then we decided not to actually plant anything, as we were leaving for our honeymoon in four days and knew no one else in the household would water the garden daily. Fast forward to today! Cards on the table, this is what we were dealing with today:
That is alllllll smoke from a wildfire in a neighboring county. I'm not kidding. If the smoke wasn't there, today would've been a cloudless day. At this point (around 2:00) the smoke was at a very high altitude, so we couldn't smell it, but it was casting an orange pall over everything. Therefore, I had to color-correct these photos. Example:
The left photo is untouched! We look like we're gardening in a post-apocalyptic world. The right photo is color-corrected, and Lucy is HIGHLY DISTRESSED that she can't get to her wood pile to chase lizards. Anyway, if the coloring in the photos looks wonky, that's why.
Marigolds help keep away pests, so Hubs planted them in his garden as well as onions, beets, peppers, and tomatoes.
Another shot of his garden with his zucchini garden in the background, and the picture on the right is my herb garden, which I finally got around to planting yesterday! I'M SO EXCITED! It has basil, lavender, cilantro, chives, parsley, and dill seeds, and is also awaiting oregano seeds. You can see the grid pattern of where I partitioned off each section, too. The zucchini garden is right behind it--they get their own box because they get HUGE.
Montage of Hubs tending his garden! I'll keep updating as the plants begin to sprout and we add more boxes. He also wants to add pavers and a fountain to the middle of the garden, and I'm really looking forward to that. Do any of you have vegetable gardens? What are you growing?
Once upon a time, the owner of the house had a metal playground there. The tenant before us had it removed (except for the spikes, which were fun discoveries for Hubs!) and then we inherited this giant eyesore. We mainly used it to store the branches that fell off our behind neighbor's tree during thunderstorms, which Lucy would then break off and drag through the yard at top speed. So, in essence, we had turned it into an accidental dog playground.
She may be a twig-obessed little psycho, but she's OUR twig-obsessed little psycho! Anyway, Hubs had big plans to turn it into an elaborate vegetable garden.
Yes! LITERAL PLANS. I tease him for this stuff mercilessly but it always ends up paying off. He wanted to do square-foot gardening (he even did research) because underneath the mulch and weed cloth was SAND. Lots and lots of SAND. We think maybe before it was a mulch playground, it was a sand playground. I don't know if you've ever tried to plant stuff in sand, but usually it doesn't go very well. The first order of business was to remove the old withered weed cloth (cloth used to block weeds from growing) and the mulch. And of course the branches Lucy loved so much.
He had Lucy's help, but not mine. There were tons of critters in that mess and I didn't have sneakers at the time.
Mostly she prowled up and down the rows, chasing lizards and making a huge mess as he raked.
Then she was exhausted by all that work so she went to lay in the shade. Fast forward past his dad moping around "helping" Hubs get all of this stuff into bags (I think he just prolonged the process but it got done nonetheless) and Hubs pulling up all the wooden boards around the perimeter and we had...
Bags and bags of mulch! Bags everywhere!
The wood itself was completely useless from weather and bug damage. Even if we'd wanted to keep it, we would've had to replace it.
But Hubs dug out the trenches a little deeper so that we could install a rabbit fence.
Lucy did her best to disrupt this process. During this whole garden-improvement process we had to bathe her probably six times, she got so filthy. You my have noticed that our yard is fenced in on all sides anyway... we have no real danger of rabbits getting into our garden. However, we do have these two to contend with:
The one on the right is Hubs' brother's rescue dog, named Parker. We're not sure what he's mixed with, but he definitely has Boxer in him, and those dogs are historically stupid. This dog is no exception. He may be only part-Boxer, but he's full-stupid. When he gets excited, he jumps into walls. He also pees on the floor if someone gives him too much attention. He takes to running back and forth through the yard at random, often right through the mulch garden. And no matter how many times we yell at him, he still tries to eat chicken wings out of the garbage... even though it has a lid. Lucy is mine and Hubs' dog, well trained and obedient, but a labrador nonetheless, and they are VERY curious and hungry creatures. So we knew our second order of business was building some kind of fence around the garden to keep these two equally destructive monsters out of the vegetable garden. After much research (Hubs had dreams of a white picket fence with a gate, which were dashed when we priced it out) we settled for a simple rabbit fence, two feet tall, with the option to upgrade once the garden was established and flourishing.
This was a day that started out great, so we had taken my siblings down to his brother's neighborhood pool, hence the bathing suit. It had become overcast, though, which is perfect putting-up-a-fence weather. That's why he's in swim trunks though. And yes, I did put down the camera to help him with this process.
The finished product! The old wood was stored there, waiting to get sawed into four-foot sections so that the yard pickup guys would take it. We also had it inside the fence to keep Lucy away from it, since she loves to chase lizards and we weren't wild about the huge metal spikes sticking out at random from the pile.
Different day, different swimsuit. Square-foot gardening consists of having smaller raised boxes of soil so that they're easier to maintain, so Hubs got simple wooden boards and constructed boxes, then stapled new weed cloth to the bottoms to discourage the growth of weeds.
Voila!
Necessary to square-foot gardens are these three components: Vermiculite, Peat Moss, and three or four different kinds of compost. This results in a garden that is (supposedly) impossible to over-water.
Montage of Hubs mixing up his three kinds of compost! (We went to all of the local hardware/nurseries and only found three different kinds of compost, what gives?)
Montage of Hubs adding in the peat moss and mixing it up!
The packaging for the Vermiculite is VERY ADAMANT that you should not breathe in their product. Why we can't breathe in something that we use to plant edible foods, I'll never know. But since Hubs just lost his mother to a rare form of cancer that scientists still can't agree has a cause (they say there is no evidence that leukemia has genetic, dietary, or environmental causes) I wasn't about to make fun of him for keeping toxins out of his lungs. No matter how silly he looked with his t-shirt tied around his face.
Montage of Hubs putting the mixture into the first garden! This would later turn into my herb garden (it's the only one I planned, planted, and maintain myself) and he went on to build another box that day. Then we decided not to actually plant anything, as we were leaving for our honeymoon in four days and knew no one else in the household would water the garden daily. Fast forward to today! Cards on the table, this is what we were dealing with today:
That is alllllll smoke from a wildfire in a neighboring county. I'm not kidding. If the smoke wasn't there, today would've been a cloudless day. At this point (around 2:00) the smoke was at a very high altitude, so we couldn't smell it, but it was casting an orange pall over everything. Therefore, I had to color-correct these photos. Example:
The left photo is untouched! We look like we're gardening in a post-apocalyptic world. The right photo is color-corrected, and Lucy is HIGHLY DISTRESSED that she can't get to her wood pile to chase lizards. Anyway, if the coloring in the photos looks wonky, that's why.
Marigolds help keep away pests, so Hubs planted them in his garden as well as onions, beets, peppers, and tomatoes.
Another shot of his garden with his zucchini garden in the background, and the picture on the right is my herb garden, which I finally got around to planting yesterday! I'M SO EXCITED! It has basil, lavender, cilantro, chives, parsley, and dill seeds, and is also awaiting oregano seeds. You can see the grid pattern of where I partitioned off each section, too. The zucchini garden is right behind it--they get their own box because they get HUGE.
Montage of Hubs tending his garden! I'll keep updating as the plants begin to sprout and we add more boxes. He also wants to add pavers and a fountain to the middle of the garden, and I'm really looking forward to that. Do any of you have vegetable gardens? What are you growing?
No comments:
Post a Comment