Garden – step 1

At long last – a post about everything we’ve done to the garden so far!

Obviously, lots of weeding. And trimming. And merciless chopping down of a bush or two. But I’ve already talked about that.

A few weekends ago we tackled the raised beds for the vegetable garden. The soil along the side of the house is kind of crummy, so I wanted a repeat of the raised beds we had at the old house. Except I was smarter this time, and made them a more manageable size – two 3×6 ft beds, and one 4×6 ft bed. I also decided to make them a full 18″ tall this time, instead of the 12″ they were before – I figured that even if I may want 12″ of soil, it’ll be nice to have a little bit of space near the top to work the soil without worrying about it falling over the edge all the time.

I started by clearing the area in question – covered in unidentified tall (and very smelly) weeds, as well as some very mature lily and hosta plants. Nobody wanted them, so in the brown bags they went.

Starting with a nice clean-ish slate, we put together the boxes in the driveway, and carried them over to the garden area.

Aren’t they so pretty and new?

Well, that didn’t last long.

In my ambition, I ordered 8 cubic yards of soil.

How much is that, you might wonder?

A half-driveway-size pile.

130 wheelbarrows.

Enough to fill the raised vegetable garden beds. [The holes you see above are from last weekend, when I finally planted my garlic. You'll also notice a future project that must be done - the wall at the left side of the picture is the shed, which is getting a lot of dirt splatter when it rains. This is from the water cascading down from the roof of the shed, so the shed will need to be outfitted with gutters at some point.]

And then add 4-6″ of good-quality soil to the existing gardens, where the roots of some poor trees and bushes were starting to show.

Ahhhh. All better now.

And it seems like I’m not the only one enjoying these improvements – I saw a nice black kitty deposit this little guy in the garden just as I was coming home today.

Maybe the softer soil makes for better hunting? While I appreciate the gift, dear kitty, maybe next time you could give it to someone who actually knows what to do with a dead mole?

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Yoga – week 3

21 days and 21 classes! Still on track! Although, I have to admit that I’m getting to the burn-out stage – in at least half the classes, I catch myself thinking “oof… this is taking a while… are we done yet?”

In a fortunate turn of events, we stopped by the Home Depot the other day, and these convenient little things grabbed my eye as soon as we walked in.

I hummed and hawed, but the price was good, and Dan overrode my hesitation by putting this in the cart. No more worries about not hardening off my plants as much as I should, because I’m too lazy! I think I might start by setting it up in the “grow-op room” as pure shelving, while I’m getting the seedlings under control, and then bring it down and use it in the kitchen/deck once it warms up a bit. Maybe I could start growing some early salads in the greenhouse come march!

I’ve also spent some time looking at plant porn (aka seed catalogues), and made a list of everything I might want to have. Mind you, this didn’t even include flowers – only vegetables. And then I pared it down to about 1/10th of the original list, because let’s face it – my current vegetable garden is not equipped to handle more than a dozen different things. New on my plate (both the proverbial plate and, hopefully, the real one at the end of the season) for this year are beets, patty pan squash, radishes, parsnips and red peppers. I’m getting pretty excited – the next steps are to plug the frost-free date into the calendar to figure out planting dates, and then plan out where everything is going to go!

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The not-long weekend

Wow, what a fun and busy weekend!

Saturday was actually pretty uneventful, except for piles of work spent by Dan on the bathroom, so I’ll fast-forward to Sunday already. Actually, no, wait – I remember now, I’ll go back to Saturday.

Dan did spend a lot of time working on the bathroom. As a break, however, we also cut down the cedar which had slowly been encroaching on the corner of our walkway. I think that corner looks way better without the tree, my plants are getting more sunlight, and turning that corner is not as much of a pain as it used to be. I can’t wait for the first full load of groceries I come home with. The plan is not to leave the wall bare but to plant some nice vine, perhaps jasmine. Meanie-no-good-husband, however, informed me that I have to wait a while for the root to dry out before we can dig it out. Maybe I can plant around it.

I also did a bit of other random work in the front garden, but not much. The real fun, in the back garden, came on Sunday. By then, I decided I was brave enough to plant my tender little seedlings outside. But first things first. That being the installation of the soaker hose. I had one last year, but it turned out to be a POS black weeper hose, that sprung a few larger holes halfway through the season, turning it absolutely worthless. The one I bought this year has two small tubes running parallel, with the odd hole here and there, and seems much better constructed – and comes with a 5-year warranty under “normal gardening use”. Home Hardware will definitely be hearing about this from me if this thing breaks in the next couple of years.

Next – what do you need to install a drip hose? Staples, of course. I had seen these handy little lovelies at Lee Valley the other day, but thought I could do better than 25 cents apiece. Half an hour and a few dozen metal clothes hangers later, I had my solution – and it was free, with the added benefit of freeing up space in a storage closet! I knew I was keeping these things around for a reason.

First, snip off the twisted hanger part – Dan warned me I’d go crazy if I tried to unravel it. Then, snip the remaining hanger into 4 equal-ish parts. Bend with pliers into the shape of a staple – with the added bonus of adjusting the size of the loop to whatever you need. Aaaand………

Done. Starting point on the left, finished product on the right. I had to adjust some of the staples so they weren’t pinching the hose, but otherwise, I’m calling this experiment a success.

I let the soaker hose do its work for a few hours, so I had thoroughly moistened soil to work with when I transplanted the plants. In went the tomatoes (yellow, normal-sized red and snackable-sized grape red), the cucumbers, and the zucchini. Some “heirloom” tomatoes remain, which I grew from a mystery packet of mixed heirloom seeds I got from my mom. Those will be planted in pots. I’ve already read about a few heirloom varieties that I’d like to try, and will probably get on the ball with that earlier next year. I just feel so bad throwing out all the seeds that I still have remaining in all the little packets I have!

Next year, along with the plans to expand the perennials garden to the front, I’d like to use some of the perennial beds to grow my vegetables. Probably not something as visible and recognizeable as a tomato, but probably garlic and maybe some of the beans could fit in reasonably well. Do you think spinach would make a nice path border?

As if that doesn’t sound like a lot of work, on Sunday, before I started any of this gardening fun, we took my mom out for brunch at the Merlot (the revolving restaurant). As always, I forgot to take pictures of the food. The view was absolutely fantastic, though, with only 4 clouds that we managed to spot far on the horizon.

Ottawa’s downtown is pretty cute already, but it sparkles in the spring sun from a few hundred feet up. The food did not disappoint – I would stay away from the breakfast-y part of the brunch spread (which was good, but nothing mindblowing), and head straight to the fish/pate/cheeses/marinated vegetables section. Ok, I lie – I would actually head for the humongous dessert spread – this is definitely one of those cases where you have to  share with a friend in order to be able to get a taste of even half of the yummies on that table.

And that’s our weekend in a nutshell.

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