So, we're on our way (hopefullly) to having a lot of food, grown right here in our own backyard (even if we don't "own" the backyard itself). We couldn't have asked for a better weekend, weather-wise - absolutely perfect!
Michael, making the raised beds. Materials were either free (old crates from his office, on their way to a landfill) or cheap (Home Depot "oops" bin or Ikea as-is section), but some of it required a lot of extra elbow grease, and it all required hundreds of screws. Michael did not walk away unscathed: he kept getting slivers in his hands, he formed a callus on one from drilling and a burn on the other from a hot drill bit. Not to mention, many sore muscles.
Pile o' dirt. "Grower's Blend" of manure, compost and fertilizer. 2 1/2 Cu. Yds. We may have overshot on the amount we'd need. I think we've used about 2/3 of it.
The beds in place. We named the boxes so that we could record (on paper, rather than on the boxes themselves, in case we do other things in the same boxes next year), and labeled each 1-4 and A, B, C (12 squares in each box). Michael cunningly thought to name the boxes after each Friends character (and if you know us, it's fitting). You should have heard the numerous conversations, yesterday, that started out something like this: "Well, we have three squares left in Monica, so what should we put in those?"
The boxes, fairly up close. We stapled on jute to tie off the squares (intended to be 12" squares, but ended up 11.5" - close enough). This helps keep everything organized, and made planting so much quicker and easier. The one in the back of the picture looks half empty - the one half has 3" of soil with potato pieces in it. 2" of soil, the potatoes and another inch of soil. As the potatoes start to bud, we'll put another inch of soil over them, and continue that process until we're to the top.
A box on the fence, with wax beans and a couple more tomatoes (we had 2 extra tomato plants after planting them in the other boxes). The "trellis" is the side of a crib, which came in a $15 cart full of odds and ends from Ikea - lots of good, usable material in that cart for 15 dollars!
Squash box. This is our one and only ground box, and it contains the Winter squash. We may have to cover this with some chicken wire or something, since we have an abundance of cute little hungry rabbits in our neighborhood.
Window boxes on South side of house. These now have sage, tarragon and oregano seeds. Basil, dill and thyme are in the other boxes, and I'm hoping to get some lavender and chamomile soon to put in the flower boxes at the front of the house. Yay, herbs!!
Grapevine. Looks like a lot of grapes will come from this, but we'll have to see how bitter they are. We trimmed out the Virginia Creeper, so that may help yield even more fruit. Heck, even if we don't end up eating them, the greenery is nice to look at.
Raspberry bushes abundant! Our neighbors tell us they've been "sharing" these raspberries for years now, and there's still too many to harvest between the 3-4 households that pick from them. We sure hope so. We plan to freeze some, as well as can some, and it would be nice to eat some fresh this Summer while we're at it. Michael cleared out the dead branches, so it should be even easier to get at these lovely fruits.
The deck. I'd like to put some smaller planter boxes around the perimeter. One reason, for some flowers that may attract birds and butterflies, and also to keep anyone from falling off (namely, me - for some reason, I'm very cautious about falling these days; I suppose the extra person on board throwing off the center of gravity will do that to a person). Of course, a table and some chairs are in order here, and at the back, by the door, a grill. We'd also like to create an apparatus to do our canning on outside, to keep that humidity out of the kitchen.
Our shiny new compost bin (and a cat to match)! Pretty cool, it turns right there on its base, and the base is also a sort of "drip pan" for compost "tea", if you will. Another convenient aspect is the bin rolls right off the base, and you can roll it to where you need it.What we've planted:
2 types of tomatoes
2 types of peppers
Eggplant
Summer squash
Winter squash
Beans
Carrots
Potatoes
Cucumbers
4 types of greens
Onions
Leeks
Herbs (Basil, oregano, thyme, sage, dill and tarragon)
This was (and will continue to be) a truly happy process, and something we've been looking forward to doing for a long time. Fingers are crossed that we'll see plenty of food from our endeavors - especially from Mike's. He worked so, so hard. It would be a great reward to be able to eat and preserve the fruits of our labors. I'll keep you posted!
