While at the beach I read the paper (cuz they give it to us at the hotel) and they had a monster article on tomato plants and info on monster sales this weekend. Eek! I gotta get my garden moving! After giving some TLC to my herb section I made my way to the back of the yard for the Attack on the Weeds. I pulled about a dozen foxgloves out of the garden beds (they are mostly planted under the cedar just next to the gardens now) yanked a good couple cans of weeds, rebuilt my walls and started diggin up the sod for the new bed. Dan helped by torching the grass where the new bed will be... not that he really needed to, but he enjoys getting out his weed dragon.
Next week I need to finish getting the sod dug up, then build the interior walls of the garden somehow so I can be ready for dirt. This is going to require coordinating with Dan, as we'll need to take the camper off the truck and have a couple cubic yards dumped in the back (this'll be cheaper and much, much easier than having it delivered... since I don't want to shovel dirt from the driveway and Dan can drive the truck right up to the garden beds) I haven't priced out those cute little interior wall things yet at the garden stores, I'm debating about putting in a low fence like thing, or just using the extra tree trunks we have lying around and hoping they stay put. Maybe a couple of good sturty tent stakes will hold them in place? Last year I used logs and they rolled just a bit after I got the dirt in place, but I'd like to have a flat surface if it's economical enough (and I'd like to avoid using cinder blocks for the rest of it, because... they're heavy)
Pictures!
OK, for this to be impressive you have to scroll down to last week's photos of the Weed Beds of Doom - but look at how much progress I made in just a couple of hours! Wee!
This is a closer shot of the new bed. The cleaner boulder to the right is where the bed used to stop, everything to the left was lawn two days ago (well, half of it was dead from having left storm debris piled there) Dan was kind enough to torch what was left of the living grass, so in theory it'll be OK to just flip it over and dump dirt on top of it. Of course, I feel the need to dig down so my roots have more space to grow... hence the two new boulders I've dug up. If I'm lucky I'll find enough rocks to make a wall without having to build anything!
My herbs from above looking down. Rosemary rocks... it's SO easy to grow and these guys (the three big ones on the right) were on sale a couple years ago for 5 bucks a piece. Woo!
It has always been my dream to have a big ol' herb garden planted in some funky geometric shape like in all my herb books. I discovered, however... that if I plant them too far from my kitchen I tend not to use them. So, they live in pots, and for now the best place for them is this wall. From left to right, oregano, flatleaf parsley, chives, flatleaf parsley, garlic chives/dark leaf oregano and.. raspberry.
The oreganos and chives wintered over and came back on their own, the parsley is new this year, as is the raspberry (not an herb, but we don't have the designated raspberry area ready for planting yet, and this pot was empty, so it's renting space) I moved my thyme bushes into pots and stuck them on the railing holders so they are currently hanging off the deck near the waterfall. I'm not entirely happy with having the herbs on the wall, but it's the best place for them right now. Although, if the deck railing works out, I can imagine having an entire row of pots hanging off the railing and growing all my herbs that way... then I wouldn't have to worry about the racoons knocking them off the wall again... hmmm...
Seedlings!
The top shelf are the seeds I started in March... the little whispy guys are tomato vines, the ones on the left are what's left of my cucmber seeds (only 5 :( ) The bottom shelf are all the squash seeds I restarted two weeks ago. They are growing like gangbusters, and are much stronger than the seedlings I started last month. Only one bush squash seed didn't sprout, I think I may have planted it too deep. The tomato plants are growing, fragile as they look, they are developing true leaves... so although the greenhouse doesn't feel any warmer on the inside than the rest of the house, they must have been somewhat drafty being by my windows, so the plastic is helping. I figure once I get the seedlings into the ground outside I can use the shelves in the firepit area (maybe even put my herbs on that instead of the wall? I'm just always thinking, aren't I?)
Oh yeah, couple of updates on plans. Dan has put a halt to the idea of putting tomato vines in hanging baskets. damnit. The MIL (bless her?) backed him up by suggesting that if the tomatoes were to split then it would drip juice on the deck. Damnit. So Mr. Egg would rather have "something pretty" growing in those baskets. Whatever. He thinks I'm going a little "tomato crazy" because it's all I talk about planting, but it's just beause it's all I talk about planting, it's not all that I plan on planting. Besides, with the crap crops that we've had in the past, I need to plant more plants so we have a better chance of getting some food out of all this effort!
He also bought a few cone-shaped baskets to hang on the fence and plant "something neat" into. Apparently he has talked to the neighbor and he said we can do whatever we want to our side of the fence. He handed them to me as if I'm going to do all the planting... part of me wants to hang at least one on the chain link by my garden and plant (dumdumdumdaaaaa!) Tomatoes! After all, if my seedlings do make it I'm going to have like 10 cherry tomato plants to stick in the ground somewhere!
3 comments:
Oohhh, as I re-read this I just thought... what if I put the shelves outside for my herbs, even on the deck! and then... then I put the cherry tomato plants in pots on the wall and let them hang down? Wahoo!
I love reading your gardening updates. It seriously gets me jazzed about my own pathetic little attempts at gardening when I wonder...what do I do next??? So I think the above idea would be cool, first of all, and like your cinderblocks, but not quite so heavy, I'm thinking of using the brick from the chimney we just took down to edge some flower beds. Or if that would look ok. Hmmm..would add some color, anyway, and I've used natural big rocks before....Hey, what is that about torching the grass? Does that help keep weeds away? First time I heard of it! I'll check back for updates, I'm curious!!!
I think brick would look really good as an edging around flower beds. They sell stuff like that at the home improvement stores, might as well use what you have and save some money!
The cinder blocks we use were our neighbor's idea. The wood that was there when we moved in rotted out pretty quickly, and was not very deep anyway. Dan's original idea was (apparently) to do some sort of wood cap on the blocks so they look nicer and weeds don't grow up through the insides of the block. I'd have to run around and level them all to do that though, and since he's working on a fenceline I'm not worried about getting that done anytime soon.
Torching the grass... I'll explain in my next post, because I think it'll be too long for comments.
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