Port Potager

Remember back in May when we were hashing out the design of the cutting garden ? Because we had a gigantic pile of extra loam in the driveway? Well, we've finally gotten around to building them: In the foreground of this photo is the blueberry bed. Kirk added a four-foot wide raised bed down the center as well as raised beds along the screened-in porch and the fence. The nice thing about adding a raised bed is that you can just load the dirt in right over the lawn, since they are a foot deep. The grass will die back on its own, saving the trouble of cutting of the turf.   This bed against the foundation of the screened-in porch was a pain to put in because we had to wedge it under that concrete curb. I bowed out after a corner of this big, heavy thing got dropped on my foot (accidentally). Somehow Kirk shoved it into place, with the help of heavy dose of digging and cursing. The beds along the fence are terraced, because there is a drop-off as you head towa...

So the snow we were preparing for back on Wednesday night  didn't turn out to be much: our cars and some spots on the grass were coated. I am happy to report that our new greenhouse tunnel, however hastily assembled, performed beautifully! We are still flush with fresh lettuce and cilantro. The cold frames also did the job, even though they are too short for much of what is in there. No sooner do we breathe a sigh of relief than we wake up today to this: Newburyport is right under that red line, just before the "S" in "Snowfall." So that means we are in for 5-9 inches of SNOW from a very, very early nor'easter. Wow. As I am typing this, it is just starting to rain, but when you open the door and take a listen it's a bit tinkly sounding, meaning that it's mixed in with ice. It's supposed to turn to all snow around midnight and continue through the morning tomorrow. So today we really raced to get some last-minute prep done in the garde...

Did I mention that last week we got a little extra dirt to top off the remaining raised beds? So this is what 20 cubic yards looks like after a giant truck dumps it in your driveway. We had to buy more loam because we ran out of topsoil that we saved from the excavation, but we caved and got Super Soil, which is half loam and half compost. Yes, we can get all the free compost we want at the Newburyport tree dump and mix it by hand with the loam, but c'mon … we're tired . That is a lot of extra shoveling (into the car, out of the car, into the wheelbarrow, turn it into the rest of the dirt). So we splurged on the more expensive dirt, and are loving the time and labor savings. The best part? This is about half of what we actually still need to fill the rest of the beds. They don't make a truck that big, though, so we got as much as we could. Also, we figured since we were going to get charged twice for delivery anyway, we'd just get half for now. You know, in ca...

June 13, 2011 One of several perks of Kirk's new position at the hospital is that he works in a smaller department, and was therefore able to get a second week of vacation during the summer (due to decreased competition for the popular dates). His second week off miraculously coincided with the week that Glenn was able to come and work on the back yard with the Bobcat and actual expertise, so the two of them worked together to get the raised beds in place. Meanwhile, I got to go to work and return home to enjoy significant, near-magical progress every day. For example, here's what I saw Monday, and I was so excited I ran in the house to grab the camera: So it took about a day to screw together the 2x12s to form the edges for the raised beds you see here. The sawing and building part was actually pretty quick, but getting the boxes into place was another issue. See Kirk digging? He had to move just about all the dirt that was roughed into place because it wasn't in q...