Last weekend was absolutely GORE-geous (she says in her best Real Housewives accent) here in Maine. It has proceeded to pour everyday since then to the point where I’m contemplating building an ark so we can ford the river that flows through our driveway. Seriously…it’s a matter of time before Goose gets swept down the street. But anyway…since Colby and I have vowed this summer that outdoor time trumps indoor projects on sunny days, we stuck to our resolution and spent it gardening. Since it finally looks like we’re past frost season, it was time to prepare for the veggie garden. Any excuse for Colby to whip out the roto-tiller…even in the raised beds.
We started by transplanting the rhubarb into a sunny spot in one of the raised beds. The rhubarb had been living in a shady spot under one of the trees in the yard and hadn’t done well in the last couple of years. Basically…it got no sun and very little water and died prematurely each spring. It’s loving it’s new home in a much sunnier locale which means more strawberry rhubarb pies! Yum!
Then we planted our tails off! It took us almost an entire afternoon to plant all our veggie seeds and also start our wedding flowers. Here is Colby showing off his best hoeing it skills…farmer Colby style…while sporting his sleek, stylish honey badger tee.
We even brought out a set of garden stakes, a Christmas gift from Colby’s mom, to mark the garden plants. They’re so cute!
Not only did we plant our seeds (lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, corn, beans, and radishes…oh my) but we also transplanted our hot peppers and tomato plants that we started early in our mini green house (read about that project back here).
And we’re happy to report, “holy tomatoes batman!”. Aka…the greenhouse was a huge success! This is our third garden and every year we’ve started hot peppers and tomatoes early inside and this was by far the most plants we’ve successfully transplanted from seedling to ground plant. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all those tomatoes! We’ve granted the neighbors permission to pick as many as they want once they start growing. So here is what our garden is looking like on the raised bed side:
And then on the other side of the garden…while Colby was giving the garden its initial soaking with the house:
Fingers crossed that everything grows! Oh and don’t mind the canoe in the bottom right of that picture. We (no joke) have a canoe in the middle of our yard…it keeps Goose from getting wrapped around the tree while on this run and barking his pretty little head off at 6 am every morning. The neighbors love us! He doesn’t seem to understand the concept that the back backyard is an NGZ (No Goose Zone).
After spending so much time outside and in the garden Colby and I started scheming up some ideas for the space to pretty it up a little. Here are some of our thoughts:
- Make some stepping stones
- Add gravel…perhaps river rock…between the raised beds (the ground is super wet there and it would keep the area from turning into a muddy mess during weeding sessions)
- Install a small garden pond
- Integrate some container gardening with pots of strawberries
- Find or DIY a small garden table and chairs
- Plant some creeping flox or some other ground cover plant along the path between the two gardens
- Add garden path solar lights to illuminate the path to the back backyard
I’m sure we won’t tackle all of these and the few that we do incorporate will probably be small changes/tweaks over time. We’ve come to learn that landscaping takes time and patience…especially when trying to create a greener, weed free lawn. Here’s hoping this weekend is sunny too so we can tackle a few more landscaping tasks.
Pssst…Read about some of our other yard work projects including building raised beds, fixing the lawn, starting seeds indoors, and about the potting bench Colby built. Happy weekend y’all!
