Garden progress April 4th- 11th

 We've got a lot accomplished this week. From the top, I planted emerald arborvitae trees so we can eventually have a little more privacy. I also seeded fescue grass between the blackberries which I covered with hay in hopes of it not sliding down the hill. We also set up irrigation hoses for blackberries and the trees until they get established.

 Our lilac bush is in full bloom. They smell so delicious. Every time I walk by I am sniffing them. More than once, I've had a neighbor drive by as I'm sniffing away which makes me giggle.

 You can't really see it but along the edges of this box is arugula, butter lettuce, and red romaine.

 Asparagus are really coming up now. You are suppose to plant them in a trench and fill it up as they grow. It's time to fill things in a few inches with soil!

 Blueberries are sprouting. I'm most nervous about getting my blueberries to grow (because they really particular about soil acidity and moisture) so I'm glad to see so far they are surviving.

 We added mulch to make some new beds around the house.

 I plan on planting flowers around the perimeter of the garden. And we will get bermuda sod to go on the dirt (outside the garden of course!!!) soon.

 We harvested a ton of kale this week and made kale chips.

Here's the deck view.

 Once the beds are all dug in I'm planning on putting wood mulch in the walkways. Maybe in future years we will upgrade to something more permanent like rock but for now the mulch will do the trick I think.

Garden Progress March 28-April 4th

We've been so busy I forgot to update on 2 weeks ago progress.

Close up picture of fence

 Garden beds are getting dug out.

 Cam rented a tiller and broke up all the rocks and clay so it would be easier to dig out the beds and prep them. I am using lots of native soil.  Which is basically just clay and adding peat moss and compost to break it up.

We planted asparagus roots this year and they are coming up. We won't be able to harvest any until next year.

 Tiller, and blackberries in the front.

 My kale hiding under the cover

 Here I tilled up that hairy vetch. It doesn't look like it now that it's dry, but the soil has become really nice in these beds.

 Strawberries

 Overall look from deck

Garden Progress March 21-28th

We've made a lot more progress on the garden this week. I had blueberries and asparagus coming in the mail so I really needed it to be ready! I got my blueberries all planted. Asparagus hopefully will get done today or tomorrow.

Here's a good overall look from a few days ago. Cameron got all garden beds made and I put them roughly where they will go. We will dig each bed in so it's level on the slope. I also painted fence posts black. I love black fences.

 Saturday the Elders came over and helped Cam put up the fencing.  They are super hard workers and also worked happily. By the time we finished for the day we had 3 sides of the fence up. I am super grateful and told them as much. Even so, I still think those guys have no idea how much they reduced my stress level.

 Cameron jimmy rigged up a stretcher to pull fence and we borrowed a come-along from a friend. It worked well.

 The fencing is a black coated welded wire fence. It's almost invisible from far enough away.

Garden Progress March 14-21

We are making some progress on the big garden. We had the missionaries over for dinner Friday and they offered to help us put the rest of the posts on Saturday! Cam had already dug all the holes the week prior with an auger so all that was needed was to cement each one in.

This is the view from the road. The first three rows which are outside the fence are blackberries. I need to get some ground cover in between the rows.

Cam already made four of the raised beds with Cruz helping screw each one together. This week I will level them because the area is sloped.

Here is the small garden 2 weeks ago.

 

And here it is now. That hairy vetch grows fast! It's almost time to till it up.

 Under the white cover is kale. The cover has a dual purpose, it helps protect plants in frost and it prevents bugs.

The kale is getting pretty big since the cloth also has a greenhouse effect. I have a few cabbage worm holes but actually my kale got attacked while I had them under grow lights indoors. Isn't that odd? I think they must have come out of the soil since I didn't use a soil-less seed mix this year.

Against the fence is my peas and below that my spinach.

Garden Start 2016

We've had a really warm spring. I started a few things early indoors, like spinach and kale. These pictures are from over a week ago, I'm just slow to get it posted.

This was my first year doing a cover crop on some of my beds. It is a really pretty bit of green, especially because everything else is still dormant. The kind I used is called hairy vetch and I planted it late October I think.  It has really started to take off now. I'm following it with tomatoes which will love the extra nitrogen the vetch fixes in the soil. The real test of how good it works will come this summer!

 Here's my little holes for snap peas- I always do sugar snaps, and a few snow peas.

 And my spinach I started indoors in my soil blocker.

 The soil blocker is great for plants that don't like transplanting because there is no shock. The roots can grow freely. I have some of my indoor seed starts in cell trays too. The trade off is that cell trays don't use nearly as much soil and they also don't take up much space under lights. A mix of both is working pretty well so far.

Here is the spinach all planted (on the right).

I will update on the new garden area soon. We are behind schedule (still working on putting up a fence) but hopefully can get caught up soon!

Garden Progress

We got a bunch done in the garden area over the weekend. After hours of back breaking wet dirt hauling uphill (harder than you would think I promise), I decided renting another skid steer was worth it to get the garden ready.

     Here's a before picture. The boys are climbing on the latest tree casualty. You can't see in the after picture below but it got ripped out. Dirt mound on the left got moved up to the top of the lot.

 
Thank you machinery for making things easy. Oh and maybe I should mention Cam who was behind it for the most part.

 Here's where I hope I don't get in trouble. We gave Cruz a turn driving the skid steer with Dad standing near by of course.

 You can almost see his expression in the picture. It was pure elation.

We got a trencher attachment and Cam went to town lining out where the fence will go. We trenched it all the way around so we could bury the fence a foot deep to keep out critters. After an armadillo got in my garden last year, I'm taking all precautions necessary!

Now I just hope we can get post holes dug and fence in before rain fills in the trench with dirt.  Garden is roughly 40 x 80 feet.

 Before

Now
 

 Before

Now
 (the rows are for being made for blueberry bushes)