It’s a good feeling to be all settled in during the spring and starting into the second year with an established garden. It’s a real joy seeing all our cultivating, mulching, weeding and composting pay off. This time last year, we were in the thick of moving, with plants being dug up and stuck in the ground wherever there was room, and the garden hastily put in mid-May. Now we have mulched areas ready to be hand-cultivated and planted, rows of over-wintered greens providing us with daily goodness, and peas, chard and radishes coming up. The garlic we planted last fall is rocking, and potato plants are popping up. Strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and artichokes all have their home in raised beds, and we constructed a little temporary straw bale hothouse for starting seeds. It’s going to be a great growing season, indeed.
We freshened up the cardboard and straw paths around the garden and weeded all the existing rows of kale, arugula, cress and garlic. Then we filled in around them with lettuce and cilantro starts for spring salads.
We were quite proud of ourselves for building these raised beds entirely from salvaged wood around the property. For the last two small ones we even used pallets. I know these will not last as long as cedar beds, but they will last a while and produce strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and artichokes for us in the meantime until we build cedar beds down the road. We got the soil in buckets from some friends with an enormous compost pile on their herb farm, and mulched around the beds with cardboard from our move and the last of an old wood chip pile along the driveway. The best thing about these raised beds is that they cost us zero dollars.
Following the advice of a local garden store, we mulched the garlic with newspaper and straw, which it seems to be liking. Soon enough the garlic whistles will grow and we can cut them off for stir fries and garlic pesto!
The raised bed we turned into a hothouse wasn’t working so well. Mint had grown up through the bottom and the cats thought we had made them a giant awesome litter box. We got some straw bales to make an insulated frame and re-used the PVC and plastic sheeting for the top. Until we get a greenhouse built, this will be a fine place to start our seedlings.
Everyone benefits from a garden, and the quail are no exception. They get all the tasty dandelion greens we pull from the garden and herb beds, and aside from berries, it is their favorite treat. They should be starting to lay eggs for the season any day now, and all those wild greens should make for some nice, dark yolks.
Out of all the wonderful adventures I have been on, I am most excited about the adventure of staying put and watching things unfold each season, right here at home.
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