Submitted by Sandie Griego on Sun, 10/19/2014 - 08:51
Warning - this is all about my garden. No sewing items in this one.
Hubby and I spent most of the day working on my vegetable garden. Got to love that man! We were at Home Depot early to pick up supplies. If you want help at Home Depot - go early. I bet we got ask if we needed help by a dozen employees. Sounds like a successful trip? You can't do anything without making two trips for supplies. Before going to Home Depot, we measured where we thought we wanted metal edging to keep grass out of my vegetable beds. A few days earlier, I had sprayed the grass with Roundup to start killing the grass around the beds. This is the before shots.
We determined we needed 12 - 8 foot lengths of the metal trim and the corners and connections to make them work. Hubby also wanted some small pieces of plywood for a garage project. I wanted a couple of PVC pipe to start the tunnel and the clamps to attach them to my beds. That was the shopping list.
When we got to the check out line, hubby had the big cart with the 8 foot length items. I had a shopping cart with more Roundup, the connections for the edging, the clamps, and two bags of compost to put in a flower bed. The cashier didn't count anything and took our word for what we got. She also hit wrong amount buttons on items. We only got home with 9 of the 12 pieces of metal trim (hubby's fault). We were charged for 5 pieces of plywood when we only got 4 (cashier's fault). When we unloaded into our trailer, I didn't see the clamps for the PVC pipe. I went back into the store and the cashier apologized and said go get another one. We went home. In looking over the receipt, we were overcharged $40. Of course we ran out of the metal edging. I also found the PVC clamp (my fault). We laid out the edging and tacked it into place to make sure what we needed when we returned. Home Depot cheerfully refunded us the $40 and I paid the $1.17 for the extra clamp I ended up with.
This is what it looks like now.
The area in front and behind this bed will have a round raised bed that will be blueberry bed and a strawberry bed.
I used the Roundup to kill the grass that ended up inside my edging. Plans for another day are to put down landscape fabric and fill in with gravel.
The round beds I plan to place the blueberry bushes and strawberries in was ordered from Amazon yesterday.
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Since blueberry bushes need acidic soil, this "Big Bag Bed" will make it easy to fill with the right type of dirt and cover with pine bark mulch. It will be 50 inches across. The strawberry bed will be 36 inches across.
I also started working on what I had been calling a high tunnel. I stand corrected. What I will have is called a low tunnel. It will look like this. The purpose is to extend the growing season.
My Winter garden I have planted looks really sad right now. There is only two broccoli plants, two Brussels sprout plants, a kale plant and garlic. This is more of an experimental garden.
My friends in my small quilt group have been sharing plants with me. I have several areas now with lilies that are doing very well. One friend gave me a bunch of Iris bulbs. I planted them, knowing that I would want to move them later. I have this strange rectangle area at the end of the driveway. It is difficult to mow and always needs the weed-eater used. I would love to stop having to maintain that area. I have killed the grass, turned over the awful clay dirt and worked in two bags of compost. It still needs work before I can transplant the Iris plants, but it is well on it's way. My hope is that by Spring, this bed will reward me with some Iris blooms.
One last item. With the water restrictions we have been forced to endure, our grass has suffered. In past times, all I really needed to take care of weeds in my lawn, was to keep the grass healthy. Now that I can't water as much as I would like, weeds are a problem. While I do pull weeds, use per-emergent, and weed killer at times, there is one weed that really bugs me.
This weed grows really well in bad conditions. It is a bright beautiful green and makes these cute white flowers. On the other side, it is not soft to walk on like grass and given the chance it will take over your yard. There are yards in our neighborhood just covered in these weeds. I pull several clumps of them every time I go outside. I am determined to not let them get established in my yard. Seconds after this picture was taken, this one was pulled up.
The hummingbird feeder has not been visited for a couple of weeks now. Yesterday, it was taken down and given a good cleaning.
The yard will get mowed one, maybe two more times this year and frost will hit. It will be time to Winter the Plamaria in the garage. Then everything will rest until Spring.