Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Spring is here (!?)

I have my garden planted!

Now, I know it is a little late in the year, but 2 BIG obstacles stood in my way:

1: We have had so much rain this year that it has been too wet for ANYONE to plant ANYTHING. The farmers are just now getting their corn crop in (6 weeks late).

2: I had to move my entire garden. I have completely given up on attempting to use the "soil" of our yard to grow much of anything in. Pure clay. It is such pure clay that my younger sister once made pots out of it, dried them in the sun (no fancy kiln or anything of that nature!) and they stayed good all summer long. Even when they were rained on. That kind of clay.

So I have opted for raised bed,square foot gardening. I LOVE IT! However--the site of my former garden is now the hugely enlarged chicken yard, so I had to move everything. All the raised beds, all the soil. That process was slowed by my complete aversion to having the rays of the sun touch my lily white (read "fish belly pale") skin. I do my yard work before the sun is up, and after it goes down.

And now it is planted and fenced, and growing for all it is worth (I hope!)

Next step: build the onion & carrot planters and plant all the herbs. We also have "Camp Funnawanna" this week with some of our favorite children, doing all kinds of awesome summertime activities--and letting their sweet mom study for her finals in peace!

3 comments:

  1. What do you use for a fence? We have deer eat our garden and it drives us crazy but we don't want to invest a lot in a fence when we aren't even sure we are going to stay here forever. We do the square foot gardening too but we only have two squares so far. Makes for a small garden.

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  2. I pounded concrete pins (which you can buy--we had a bunch from an old project--you could use fence posts) in at the corners, then I used nylon zip-ties to attach chicken wire. Pretty cost effective and rabbit effective. Not very pretty to look at--but I don't really care! I also plant marigolds with every plant--it really does help keep the critters away.

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  3. Thanks for the ideas! Never knew about the marigold trick.

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