Anyone interested in why I haven’t been posting to my blog very much lately? Well let me show you!
Remember that path I put in? And that messy mound of dirt to the left of it? I finally got a garden box in! I made it out of eight $2 fence posts from Lowe’s, and sixteen $.79 twelve inch stakes. So for around $30 I have a new 8 foot long garden box! I’ve planted yellow crookneck squash along the fence and cabbage along the front. I also added some Iris’ to each side of the box, much better!
Next I planted some Thyme ground cover in my stone entry…will be very cool in a couple of years!
In my existing garden box, we added a ‘hog panel’ trellis, again using the cheap fence posts to hold it up.
Funny story about the hog paneling, I saw it at IFA last year and have been wanting a panel for this trellis ever since. The problem was that I needed a 14’ length for the box. The paneling is sold in 16’ lengths, and we have bolt cutters that we could easily use to cut it down to size, but HOW do we get the panel home?
Turns out that if you cut it down to the 14’ length needed at IFA when purchased, you can then tie the panel to the top of your 1979 Mercedes station wagon…bend the front end of the panel down to your front bumper and attach, and allow the back of the panel to overhang the back of the car by about 3 feet. Then you drive REALLY slowly down the backest of back roads to your house (paneling bouncing in rhythm to your driving), praying you don’t pass any law enforcement along the way…
Worked for us! Hehehe…
(And yes, we could have cut it down to 7’ sections, but how much fun would that have been to drive home?)
By the way… the stuff is AWESOME! Very rigid and perfect for a trellis! and the 6’ x 16’ length cost only $24! Not bad!
So in the bed with the new trellis we have the following planted:
Peas, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Pole Beans, Radishes, Spinach, more Beans, Brussels Sprouts, Spring Lettuce mix, and still more Beans.
I’m trying out the square foot gardening thing this year.. will keep updates and results coming!
This pic isn’t vegetable related, but I wanted to show off our Wisteria while in this corner of the yard. It’s growing up the house and down along the lattice fence… we had at least 20 blooms this year, the most we’ve ever had! Pic’s of those will be posted later also.
These pots have snake gourds, rosemary, cilantro and those red things I’m blanking the name of…
These pots have Strawberries! And another flower I don’t know the name of..
Our hot tub tomato bin has 24 tomato plants in it this year… again trying the square foot gardening thing, it says 1 plant per square foot…
Another new addition to our yard this year… our recycled gazebo squash trellis! We reused a garden box that has been moving around the yard since I bought it, inside the gazebo, then added a little cedar fence panel border around the outside of the gazebo corners. The box has 12 Acorn squash plants in it, and the little border has about 9 million Marigold seeds in it.
The chair is there as additional trellis material. It’s going to be really fun covered in squash!
A better pic of the little border around the squash box…
Another fun project this season is this rock wall…Dudley got the idea of ‘harvesting’ random stones off the dry canal bed this spring. We spent a couple of evenings practicing our shot-putt abilities by digging stones out of the dry bed, then THROWING them up to the access road to the best of our abilities! I won’t lie, a few of them came right back at us, causing us to run screaming, but we managed to get them all up! Then is was loading them into our wheelbarrow, unloading them in our back yard, letting them ‘age’ for a month (or until we could move again), then stacking them along our old rotting wood trellis box to create the wall. Cute ain’t it?
And we wonder why it hurts to move in the mornings…
There are 3 new Raspberry bushes planted in this section of the bed.
This section has 6 Bell Pepper plants and 3 Pumpkin plants.
This is our old wishing well. We took the top off of it this year, and are now using it to grow Thyme and a couple of varieties of Basil.
This view shows all three of the “new” beds.. plus an old rusty barrel that I’m going to use for a zucchini planter.
More herbs! A massive Terragon bush, and 2 varieties of Parsley.
This one is full of Chives and Garlic. It’s awesome using fresh garlic out of your garden all summer long!
And last for today, this bed has a ginormous Oregano bush, and my Rhubarb plant I planted last year.
Ok.. that was a lot. And I didn’t even show off the flower beds and flowers yet! I’m thinking that’ll be the next post…
Enjoy!
