First Planting, First Harvest
Preparing
From a gardening best-practices standpoint, we probably never should have gone on vacation two weeks ago. It was awesome, but you may recall that we came back to garden beds that looked like this:
Well, they're even worse now—completely covered in crabgrass and other assorted weeds. If we had skipped vacation, we would have had the garden beds under control before this happened, but no. As it is, we have a completely irritating extra step as we prepare the planting beds.
Step 1: Pull the weeds.
Last weekend we took the time to cover all the beds around the large patio area with the black plastic we had used in the side yard. This didn't work as brilliantly as it did on the lawn area, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it wasn't as hot or sunny this week, or maybe crabgrass is just ridiculously well adapted to people trying to kill it. Some bits were dead, but most was just starting to yellow, which left us a lot to pull.
We ended up just doing it by hand as fast as we could possibly go. Sure, some (ok, lots) of the pieces broke off above the roots, but we knew the soil was going to get turned and broken and covered over with an additional 10-12 inches of soil and compost, so it was mostly an issue of removing as much matter as possible. Even so, that was a shit-ton of weeds (344 square feet's worth, if you're keeping score).
Step 2: Turn the soil.
This means shovel aside all the dirt that's mounded above the grade so you can stab your shovel down into the packed dirt at the bottom. Scrape it off, scoop it up, and dump it over upside down. Congratulations: you have turned about one square foot of your bed. Repeat ad nauseam to loosen the soil and pull up the remaining weeds.
Step 3: Add the compost.
This step is helped along by driving a crappy car that needs new shocks so you can get the loaner pickup truck from the mechanic for the weekend. Drive said pickup to the tree dump and fill with free compost. Repeat as necessary or until the tree dump closes (we went three times). While one person is turning (see Step 2, above), the other fills the wheelbarrow with compost and dumps it in the bed so it can be mixed with the loam that's already there. Of course if there isn't any loam there, it's being shoveled in from a nearby bed. At some point we will have to buy more to fill empty beds because there just isn't enough topsoil from the excavation to cover it all. Do this about a zillion more times.
Step 4: Rake it smooth.
Ahhh...now THAT looks like a garden!
Planting
We didn't quite get around the whole patio today, but should be able to finish the last bit tomorrow (after some Yankee Homecoming fun). But what we DID do was plant some herbs! Actual plants are in the ground! Cue the Handel.
It's not much, but it's what we had (or were able to find) so far into the growing season. From front to back, there is lavender (a row on either side of the path into the large patio square), sage, mint (which we had dug up and saved from the yard before the excavation), and in the very back is a little grocery store basil that we broke up and set out.
Now that there are actually plants involved in this garden, Tiegan is ready to lend some muscle (seriously, check out her guns!) to water the basil.
And before you get all worried that we put mint in a bed and not a pot, you should know that I have managed to kill it (albeit accidentally) in the past. Also, this particular little section of the herb garden is the "bully bed" and will have the mint, sage, horseradish, and chives. Here they can all battle for supremacy with some extra elbow room, away from the more polite plants.
Harvesting
And if it wasn't quite exciting enough that we put in some plants today, we also had our first harvest in Newburyport:
We had extra stalks of mint that we didn't need when we transplanted, so we brought it in and hung it up in the kitchen (where we can smell it!) to dry. This also gave us the added fun of finding recipes that use mint for this week. We started with the Moosewood, which is our go-to for what to do with summer veggies and herbs: Mediterranean stuffed eggplant it is! We will also try to hit the farmers market tomorrow before the lamb farmer sells out—hoping for kabobs with a mint sauce this week as well!
Editor's Note: Please indulge all the exclamation points here. I thought about deleting them, but really, I think I deserve to emote a little bit today. (!!!)
From a gardening best-practices standpoint, we probably never should have gone on vacation two weeks ago. It was awesome, but you may recall that we came back to garden beds that looked like this:
Well, they're even worse now—completely covered in crabgrass and other assorted weeds. If we had skipped vacation, we would have had the garden beds under control before this happened, but no. As it is, we have a completely irritating extra step as we prepare the planting beds.
Step 1: Pull the weeds.
Last weekend we took the time to cover all the beds around the large patio area with the black plastic we had used in the side yard. This didn't work as brilliantly as it did on the lawn area, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it wasn't as hot or sunny this week, or maybe crabgrass is just ridiculously well adapted to people trying to kill it. Some bits were dead, but most was just starting to yellow, which left us a lot to pull.
We ended up just doing it by hand as fast as we could possibly go. Sure, some (ok, lots) of the pieces broke off above the roots, but we knew the soil was going to get turned and broken and covered over with an additional 10-12 inches of soil and compost, so it was mostly an issue of removing as much matter as possible. Even so, that was a shit-ton of weeds (344 square feet's worth, if you're keeping score).
Step 2: Turn the soil.
This means shovel aside all the dirt that's mounded above the grade so you can stab your shovel down into the packed dirt at the bottom. Scrape it off, scoop it up, and dump it over upside down. Congratulations: you have turned about one square foot of your bed. Repeat ad nauseam to loosen the soil and pull up the remaining weeds.
Step 3: Add the compost.
This step is helped along by driving a crappy car that needs new shocks so you can get the loaner pickup truck from the mechanic for the weekend. Drive said pickup to the tree dump and fill with free compost. Repeat as necessary or until the tree dump closes (we went three times). While one person is turning (see Step 2, above), the other fills the wheelbarrow with compost and dumps it in the bed so it can be mixed with the loam that's already there. Of course if there isn't any loam there, it's being shoveled in from a nearby bed. At some point we will have to buy more to fill empty beds because there just isn't enough topsoil from the excavation to cover it all. Do this about a zillion more times.
Step 4: Rake it smooth.
Ahhh...now THAT looks like a garden!
Planting
We didn't quite get around the whole patio today, but should be able to finish the last bit tomorrow (after some Yankee Homecoming fun). But what we DID do was plant some herbs! Actual plants are in the ground! Cue the Handel.
It's not much, but it's what we had (or were able to find) so far into the growing season. From front to back, there is lavender (a row on either side of the path into the large patio square), sage, mint (which we had dug up and saved from the yard before the excavation), and in the very back is a little grocery store basil that we broke up and set out.
Now that there are actually plants involved in this garden, Tiegan is ready to lend some muscle (seriously, check out her guns!) to water the basil.
And before you get all worried that we put mint in a bed and not a pot, you should know that I have managed to kill it (albeit accidentally) in the past. Also, this particular little section of the herb garden is the "bully bed" and will have the mint, sage, horseradish, and chives. Here they can all battle for supremacy with some extra elbow room, away from the more polite plants.
And if it wasn't quite exciting enough that we put in some plants today, we also had our first harvest in Newburyport:
We had extra stalks of mint that we didn't need when we transplanted, so we brought it in and hung it up in the kitchen (where we can smell it!) to dry. This also gave us the added fun of finding recipes that use mint for this week. We started with the Moosewood, which is our go-to for what to do with summer veggies and herbs: Mediterranean stuffed eggplant it is! We will also try to hit the farmers market tomorrow before the lamb farmer sells out—hoping for kabobs with a mint sauce this week as well!
Editor's Note: Please indulge all the exclamation points here. I thought about deleting them, but really, I think I deserve to emote a little bit today. (!!!)
PS--The lime green kitchen is not long for this world.
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