I reminded him that I've been coughing for 13 weeks. I don't have much sympathy for his overall condition, though I feel bad for him.
I appreciated that even though he was sick, he still came with me to a local nursery for a raised bed gardening seminar.
I've already started sketching my plans, and googled the shit out of any terms that could be related to raised bed gardening. I've found several great sites, and have modified my initial thoughts.
We have a fairly large back yard, so I'm thinking of doing a 'vegteable bed' that is 4' x 16', and a 'fruit/herb bed' that will be 4' x 8'.
If any of you have any great ideas, or tips, or tricks... please, pass them on!
Growing up we always had a garden, and we HATED 'weed duty'. My brother and I each had to weed for 1/2 an hour during the summer... something about making us 'enjoy the outdoors' or something. I would beg, plead, bargain, and trade everyone else chores to get out of it. My Mom eventually laughed, because I was doing 1-2 hours worth of chores inside to get out of the 1/2 hour outside. Ya. That was me. The girl who hated outside. Really, not much has changed, but I've got some more gusto for outdoor activities when it's related to our house... I've built a fence, I've cleaned mortar off bricks, I've mowed the grass. So, I'm thinking this will be the same type of thing... I'll have more ownership. Maybe?
I attempted it once before in our last house. It was the summer my husband deployed, so I thought it would give me something to do. We build our fence 8 feet shy of our lot line, because all the utilities ran the lot line, and we would have had to hand dig every hole... I did the garden on the other side of the fence, and it turned into one of those 'out of sight- out of mind' things. I got a few puny tomatoes, and a squash. Overall, not a successful endeavor.
(sidenote- a commercial for Bambi just came on, and Trav asked if his Mom got hit by a car.... "no honey, shot by a hunter"... "meh- same thing" he says?!?)
So, for now, this is the picture of my garden... all the info they gave us today!
So, in a word, today was all about gardening (or hopeful gardening?)
Good luck with the gardening, we can only grow in pots in the shade here because of how hot it gets. But my father-in-law gardens, he pours fish emulsion over the plants, it makes them grow huge! He uses water from tilapia, its a little uniqe but works so well, if you have any fish farms near you, you might be able to get some water for free or real cheap. It will work wonders, but don't let it spill in your car while transporting it, we bring it home from Colorado and our car smelled for weeks.
ReplyDeleteEver since I moved from the city to middle of nowhere, I really love gardening. You're talking about strictly fruits and veggies not flowers, right?
ReplyDeleteWe had trouble with evil weeds and DH put down a tarp thing, made little holes and planted the seeds through the holes. He had heard this "worked". Not so much! The first summer he raked out the soil and this past summer he used a rototiller (sp) that worked much better.
We were frustrated about this but it seemed like the bought things that had already "started" worked much better than from scratch seeds (except for our pumpkins, which grew like crazy, and our green beans and snap peas). I felt like that was "cheating" but we did it anyway. We ended up with over 300 cucumbers (seriously, DH went overboard with that one), a ton of tomatoes, green peppers, green beans, sugar peas, onions, pumpkins and squash.
Good luck and keep us posted!
Good luck gardening! Every time I have tried my dogs dig it up or try and it eat before I can do anything to fix it. LOL
ReplyDeleteWe made 2 raised bed gardens a few years ago and we LOVE them!!! It is amazing to have fresh veggies and fruits right outside our door all summer and fall. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteTell Trav I said "Meh same thing" SO NOT THE SAME THING!
ReplyDelete**shakes something not pom-pom like**
Good luck with the garden...let me know if you need help. :)