We aren’t finished with creating the garden, but we are definitely getting closer. We planted two blueberry plants, and one more Josta Berry, plus a rhubarb. Definitely worried about the rhubarb as both leaves it had when we transplanted it are now dead and I am not sure there is a new leaf somewhere just waiting to pop up and surprise us. Can’t worry about that one right now as we have bigger fish to fry.
First we had to build two new small raised beds for our herb gardens. We put both of them in between the fruit trees. But before we could do that we needed to lay down the ground cloth. That proved to be difficult to walk on without bark mulch. It was incredibly easy to trip on the unsecured ground cloth.
We now have our process much better defined. Use the string trimmer to shorten all the weeds and grass. Then we lay ground cloth, and last step is to add bark mulch to keep the ground cloth in place. Then repeat that process many more times to completely cover the garden. It took almost three hours of steady work by Dan to cover the first section of the garden between the corner and the first fence post with a layer of bark mulch. He totes bags and lifts barges in his spare time.
I used the string trimmer a couple of days ago and I’m still seriously limping around. My knees did not appreciate how heavy that thing is. Evidently I’m not actually still in my early 20’s. Who knew??? So alas, I can’t help with that part of the process again. Dan will get to do that part, too.
It makes the trees much easier to see when they aren’t against a background of a bazillion weeds and wild grasses. And the herb raised bed looks spiffy! It has Lemon Thyme, Chives and Italian Parsley. I also planted some Oregano seeds. Those seeds are so tiny!
The apple tree has four different varieties of apples on one root stock and one of the branches is an over-achiever with blossoms!
We won’t get any fruit from these because they need a pollinator and we don’t have one. None of the other branches have any blossoms. So we just merely get to admire these.
This herb bed has Rosemary and Sage, and I planted Basil seeds.
See how many weeds, etc.? It’s pretty thick! Each section of the garden between two fence posts takes three rows of ground cloth and one entire pallet of bark mulch. We now have some concept of how much bark mulch we have to order next. But the transformation is really dramatic and so we will continue on.
I put this little batch of flowers next to the fence, between the fruit trees and the raspberry canes.
It has radishes, four rows of lettuce, two rows of spinach and two rows of rainbow chard. The lettuce and radishes have real leaves and are growing really well. The lettuce is also starting to produce real leaves but the plants are still tiny. The chard just has baby leaves so I haven’t been able to thin them yet.
The one plant I’m really really wanting to mature quickly is the chard!
We planted two kinds of potatoes; the yellow potato is an early season, and the russet potatoes are a late season.
Waiting for the peas to start blooming and that will happen within the next couple of weeks. And then it seems like it will go quickly and we’ll have fresh green peas!
It will be quite a while before we have any peppers to harvest. These plants all seems to take the transplanting well.
Mostly we planted roma tomatoes so I can make tomato sauce. We also have a couple of eating tomato plants.
All in all the garden is just so much fun, even if it is a whole bunch of work getting it set up.