Fall Garden & Summer Lookback

At the beginning of summer, Mike and I started putting together half of our garden. We followed the system of Back To Eden.  If you have some time to watch this film, I highly encourage it as it encourages a fairly inexpensive, high yield, low maintenance garden (& it's free to watch on their website). Early this spring coming we'll build up the other half of the garden with compost & mulch and the entire garden will officially be done!

These next few photos were from the beginning of summer. We planted corn, radishes, cucumber, tomatoes, and bush beans. We wanted to keep it simple for our first season. Only one of those plants never sprouted and that was the tomatoes.I have a feeling that it was because 2 days after I placed the seeds to dirt, we had a horrible, awful heatwave. Like 117 degree heat index bad. So, my guess is it just killed off the seeds. Actually, it seemed to have done it to the cucumber plants as well but a few weeks later, lagging behind the rest of the plants, 2 small cucumber vines started growing.  How sweet it was to see two little survivors, and how well they've graced me with plump, juicy cucumbers. 

 Corn starting to grow.

 Bush Beans

 Radish harvest

 Here you'll see the beginning of fall crop. Our corn, cucumbers, and radishes are still growing but we added in 3 types of lettuce, a row of spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, and carrots. Look at our beautiful sunflower guarding over the little seedlings.

 Zoe attempting to help, but really just wants to chase our rabbit, Riker, around the garden.

 Yesterdays harvest: about 1/2 pound bush beans, 2 corn, 1 cucumber, and a handful of radishes.

 Cucumber plants as of this morning. They're still doing great!!

This is where our corn is at now. I made the mistake this year of not planting multiple rows of corn (don't ask what I was thinking) so chances were that none of these plants would pollinate and produce ears of corn. Smart me, I made sure to shake the stalks a bit every other day and, TA-DA, we have corn!! 4 ears so far, and I see at least 4 more I'll be able to pick next week.

This week's project is weeding out the grass that crawled up onto the mulch. We did half the garden yesterday (as you can see from the fresh rows that were just planted), and while it's sweaty work out in the sun, it's really quite easy to pull out. Because of the way the grass crawled up the sides of the garden Mike put in a plastic barrier around the garden to prevent this from happening again. We definitely let the grass get way too far but every time we had a chance to work together to weed, it rained...like bad rain. Like, here's a video of our yard flooded.  Luckily, the garden was fine.

Here's to a bountiful harvest and my favorite season arriving, FALL!
-Lacey

Garden Fence: The Gate (Sneak Peak)

We've finally started working on the garden. Step one was getting the fence complete so that way, when we lay down the compost & wood chips the dogs can't run in and start digging holes. They seem to be fond of that activity.

The plan is to simply use rodent proof wire fencing ($25 for a 50 foot roll) for the border attached to metal stakes, and then chicken wire inside the actual gate (the remaining chicken wire will be used for the rabbit hutch). The gate is actually 2 gates, each 4' wide so when both are open we have an 8' opening to back the truck in to dump the compost/wood chips.

Sunday was spent building the gate, cutting the two wood posts, and then waterproofing all of the wood.  Since the waterproofing has to cure for 48 hours, we'll be putting up the gate tomorrow and then rolling out the metal fencing border. It's not a perfect fence. Nor is it really what I want permanently (I'd rather wood fencing), but since we're strapped on cash and trying to stick with our budget, buying $35 of fencing & chicken wire, $10 in wood, and about $20 in hardware, this is the most cost effective option. Plus, it'll hold up for a few years until we can afford to build a more stable, long-standing, wood fence.

Mike working hard in our dirty garage.

This is the chicken wire we're using for the inside of the gate.

Lining the inside of the gate.  See, I work hard, too.

This is just a sneak peak. Look out for an entire blog post on how to build the entire fencing system, including measurements, tools needed, hardware that we used, etc.  Hopefully it'll be up by the end of the week!

-Lacey