Where Did The Week Go?

Its been a super busy week, Kitchen garden is ready to be planted.

Isaiah & I ran out to Earth First and got 2 scoops/2 yards of compost nearly killing the poor trailer.  After we were loaded and driving home I  noticed what I thought was heavy exhaust coming from the van.  It’s not been driven in months and figured it needed a serious tune up. Turned out it was the tire smoking!! It was rubbing on the bed of the trailer. Here I thought all those nice folks waving were being super friendly & admiring my towing skillz!

Thank goodness it was a old country road & not heavily traveled so I ever so slowly drove to a wide farm driveway and called for reinforcements.

Tire melt

The guys used some tie down straps a cinched up the trailer sides so I could on without transferring the load (thank goodness!) Unfortunately when we got home I couldn’t get the end board of the trailer off to easily dump and spread bits of it at a time….so Isaiah & I shoveled it out. Talk about a work out! It was 87 degrees and felt like 100.  We tried to make a a game of, took a few breaks spraying each other with the hose & got it done

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Kitchen Garden… Done and ready for planting

Raspberries are in the ground, I put them in last week but needed to wait for a trip to the lumber store to get posts for the trellis.  After Mr. Fix- it cut them to length,  Evie & I put them in last weekend. Instead of using the wire fencing I think for this frame we’re going with wire strands.  Cheaper…much cheaper.  Originally we used wire fencing for sturdiness & thinking long term.  The grid on the blackberries is nice for weaving in and controlling the vines but we would loose some berry clusters as the vines grew. Hopefully the standard wires will be different.

Laundry’s waiting

Have a great weekend!     

Katie

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Expanding Our Growing Space

 

Each year we’ve attempted to expand our growing space at a semi controlled pace.  I say semi controlled a bit tongue in cheek because I tend to dive into things 500% head first & ask questions later.  I nearly did myself in the first year gardening.  To much, to fast without knowing what I was doing.  Mr. Fix-It (bless his weary heart) always bailed me out.  A few years ago unspoken agreement was made to grow slowly,  do our research first and plan the steps needed.  Last year we expanded the garden about 10 feet in overall length, and also added 3 raised beds.

This year? I’m taking over the old pool area. It’s a nice large space  about 20 X 20 with no use other than more grass to mow.  We considered moving the play gear here but we cant see it from the house to keep an eye on the kids.  So what to do, what to do, but grow stuff!

The “plan” is to keep the circle and shift the salad greens from the raised bed to the circle along with herbs & create a kitchen garden of sorts.  I’m not sure if I’ll create a wheel or just wedges.  The wheels look great but generally are shown when newly planted. I can just see thyme and oregano trying to take over by summers end.  This was to be a summer project, transplanting when the time was right for various herbs.  But, what’s the saying… “Make Plans and God Laughs?” As it turns out I need to do this now. My sister in law called and said their drive way is being redone.The new layout will take out half of her asparagus bed. Although out of season, if I wanted them I had to get them now. So I have a bucket of asparagus….I think there are close to a dozen crowns in there with a few of them gone to seed to transplant today into the raised bed. Fingers crossed they survive!

Also in the bucket is a bunch of raspberry canes.  Their bushes had these (and many more) shoots popping up about 3 feet from the main berry area.  They were slated to be mowed over.  Again, not the best time to transplant but we were able to get quite a bit of the roots so I’m hopeful they will survive with some extra TLC.

Free = gardening on the cheap and that makes me verrrrry happy!

Katie

Technorati Tags: Katidids,gardening,gardening on the cheap,aspargus,raspberries