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Allright! Got some pictures finally so you can see why I had so much fun, haha! This was last year, start to *halfway* finished. Go Here.
So, anyways, my post last year about why I stopped halfway, Here.
Well, now I have claimed the full space. That blackberry got a bit too happy where it was, guess I should have taken a pic, it had grown halfway up the space!
SO, now I have THIS space!
See the happy happy Parsley? All that soil..begging for plants!
There was a surprise, you can kinda see it down there. There was so much overgrowth under that blackberry that I had no clue it was there....
A rosemary bush. A very tough one who just now sees the light of day....
That was a serious chore that I felt, for sure :D
Here is a nice shot of the garlic, I had some flower bulbs coming up (I *thought* I had gotten all those tulips out!). As I know garlic really does not like to be transplanted I made sure to take it ALL up, get out the garlic and then replant the garlic by digging the hole REALLY deep and dangling the roots down while filling the dirt around them.
So, I proceeded to plant the entire area. In the garlic area I planted Early Radishes and towards the end I planted Spinach, then some Walla Walla sweet onions.
On the other side I put in a *tad* bit of spinach, some more onions, some butterleaf lettuce and greenleaf lettuce. It's time...time to grow!
I really wanted to put in Walla Wallas today but the soil is still 'dirt' so I went to the local Home Depot and got some 'emergency cow poop', came home and I dumped about a bag and a half between the two spaces.
At this very moment I am reading a book called 'Cubed Foot Gardening' by Christopher O. Bird. Well, I really like what he has to say. So, I am doing an intensive seasonal rotation garden. Going through it I decided to ignore the packets suggestions (I know! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???) Either way, I looked through our last frost, possible first frost...and found that for some reason (Ring of fire? Could it be the volcanoes? Hmmm...maybe ;) ) that our growing season is actually LONGER then where I grew up in NC! Maybe a month or so longer! Wow.
So, I planted! I planted the Walla Walla's that I was going to anyways, but also planted the smooth leafed Olympic spinach according to the 'cubed' ft design. Spinach is kinda tall so it gets the north side of the garden all over! Then I put the onions in front of the spinach to fill the area on the north side. On the south side I planted all the lettuces and some onions. I put the butterleaf and greenleaf through my newly opened area and then a 'garlic rectangle' and early radishes. So, assuming things work the way I have been reading, both online and in the book, and from what I saw last year....I should have solid green in about a month! wOOt!
Next week? Cold Frames based out of the containers that our greens come in.
I
shall plant the tomatoes, I have Brandywine and my cross breed black
prince/brandywines from last year, and some cherry sweets :D
Last year,
when I moved it, I started reclaiming the section of 'gardening space'
next to the house. These were fallow sections, with an odd assortment
of flower bulbs that were in weird places and a lot of grass. I could
barely see the walkway between the two raised beds. Granted, this is a
rental house but how could I possibly NOT use them?
So, at the end of these beds was a HUGE nasty, mean and thoroughly entrenched blackberry, one of the sorts that makes you understand why they are the bane of the PNW. I figured, go ahead and clear what I could and then cut it back, at the very least. No way, there *is* also a nest of yellowjackets, who knows how long they have been there!
Being the organic gardener I am, and having turned rather a bit of the soil already and seeing all the 'wonderful' (note sarcasm) grubs that were here and there...I had an odd idea. I left the yellowjackets alone! They eat grubs so we had an understanding, I leave you alone, you leave me alone :D That worked out great, I think there was only one time I went around the corner and thought, hey...not today...not going in there! Otherwise, we were out there all the time so it balanced well and I didn't have to go through the trouble of wiping out an entire colony, haha. I know...yellowjackets, and ground ones at that, the kind that if it stung my Mom, she would be dead...but still, didn't want to kill them, especially since they were such a help in the end.
I
know they are still there, but they are hibernating so I went ahead and
did the clearing. I really don't know exactly were they are, I am not
sure they are actually in the garden itself but maybe in some bushes
that are very thick at the end, which is actually the top of a rockery
beside our very steep and very narrow (pretty much the Seattle norm)
driveway. Guess we will find out when it warms up! I really need to
take pics, still have one somewhere I can dig up to show where I
stopped digging last year.
So, cutting that blackberry, I started cutting sections and tossing them back in the yard waste...and cutting...and cutting. The grass was long enough that when it died out for winter there were a couple sections that I just pulled it up with NO weeds below. Of course where there were weeds they were seriously there, and then the bulb thing. Shouldn't you have a rhyme or reason to placement? No...that was what whoever had put these in thought :D
The best thing was, in the corner I *think* the yellowjackets might be, under that blackberry from Hades...was a 2-3 foot tall Rosemary. Healthy, happy...and I had a chicken in the fridge so I went out to get some rosemary, thyme and a handful of parsley and stuffed them all into the chicken. So, lot of work, but immediate benefits. I will try to get some pics later, it has been raining pretty much ever since I was out there (started sprinkling while I was still out there but needed coffee grounds!).† Requires Javascript
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