back in November, Mark spent an afternoon clearing out some of the plants around the back deck that we managed to kill this year while we kept busy with all our inside projects.
and now, thanks to this insane warm spell also known as the winter without snow, possibly known as the year without winter, Mark has been able to build himself a raised bed along the back of the house. It is 3'x
on top of all that (literally) he also built a support system for the mesh/cage/trellis that will keep the birds and critters away and give the climbing plants something to climb on. He made it a little shorter than the full length of the bed so that it would not overlap in front of our bedroom window, and just the right height to sit just under the bathroom window.
last weekend he finished gathering all the ingredients for the special dirt he needed to mix up and put in the bed. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the details of the garden, because this is really Mark's project. I know there is vermiculite involved, that he got from the garden supply store. And the peat moss came from Walmart. And then he borrowed his dad's truck and picked up some compost for free from the landfill. (we're working on our own compost, but it's not ready yet) I wish I could tell you all the deets about how much of each thing goes into the special dirt, but the best thing I can do would be to direct you to the square foot gardening book.
we still need to fine tune the mesh, and get some sort of trellis for the side that is up against the house, and make our square foot delineations, but those are all things that can be done in the spring. apparently the important thing was to get the dirt ready so it could sit over the winter. if winter ever comes that is. i mean we appreciate the extra nice weather that allowed us to get the garden all ready, but it might be nice to get just a little bit of winter before its time to put seeds in the ground.
rain, rain, go away.
come on back in spring someday.
we'd like some snow in which to play.
rain, rain, go away.
PS. today is SOPA strike day. i'm not blacking out my blog because i get a whopping 12 page views a day and it wouldn't really make that much of a statement. but i did sign Google's petition. (i think) i'm still learning what i can about this censorship proposition and what it would mean for the internet, but censorship of any kind doesn't sit quite right in my head so that's where i stand on this one.
4 comments:
How will you get through the deer resistent fence to harvest your crops? A garden gate perhaps?
yeah, that still needs some tweaking. we're thinking the front will eventually be attached at the top and be able to lift/roll up when we need access to the bed but then hook back in place to keep the critters out. but it was way after dark by the time Mark got to that point so this was our 'good enough for now' solution.
Lookin good! And don't worry - winter will come. Yesterday we had little minus signs in front of our temps for the first time this year. My concern is that winter will feel obligated to stay longer since it is coming later!
Claire wants to know what you are going to keep in that 'huge cage!'.. she hopes some sort of circus animal, Nick thinks a pig... we'd be happy with either one ;)
Post a Comment