Vegetable Garden : Expanding Our Garden

This year, we were hoping to expand our garden a bit. At the beginning of Spring, I got to work... I built two new raised beds (same plans as last year). I saved a bit of money by using 2x4s from a neighbor, but still purchased the cedar fencing planks to match our other beds. We filled it with dirt we still had from last year and took our sweet time loading them up. The girls like to dig around looking for worms, so they entertained themselves while I did most of the actual work.

Before all the weeds could grow in, I started working on cutting back some of the brush out in the back. I cleared a space so I could dump all of my yard waste (our town has a yard waste pickup day and can purchase stickers or bins for weekly yard waste pick up, but I'd prefer to just toss it in the back). I cut down a bunch of honeysuckle and trimmed some other areas. I also worked on tearing down a lot of the weeds next to the fence. I discovered multiple piles of brick covered in vines. I've been gathering those up and saving them for some small paths through our garden beds. I was hoping to tear out everything along the fence and plant some sunflowers, but I'm finding a lot of bricks, broken concrete, and glass so it is a bigger project than I anticipated.

Around mid-april, we started our seeds. I lay out our seeds on a damp paper towel. I fold them in half and put them in a plastic baggie to let sit for about a week. We have been so busy this spring that I kind of forgot about them. They sprouted nicely and eventually we transferred all the little sprout babies to small pots. I kept an eye on the weather and moved them inside on cold nights.

Early May, I started moving the plants to the garden beds. Because it was such a busy month, we forgot to do daily checks on the garden... and it did just fine.

Around the beginning of June, we started some watermelon, pumpkin, and bean seeds to fill up the other two beds. We hoped to make a little pumpkin patch between the raised beds and the garage, but the weeds were taking over too quickly so we'll push that project off for another year.

Last year, we had deer steal some of our veggies and we're already seeing some deer activity so far this year. The original plan was to finish enclosing our yard with a privacy fence in the spring, but our last couple of months have been insane and I have yet to submit for a permit. Since I've pushed the fence plans off, we still need to have a plan against the deer. I started a small fence around the garden before I realized I had significantly less chicken wire than I thought I did. Projects these days take way too long, so I also purchased some sort of Deer spray for the garden area. I'm hoping that will be enough to ward them off a bit, but we will see.

Lately, we have enjoyed lots of small picnics out near the garden. There are nice pockets of shade throughout the day, so it is a perfect spot to relax. The girls love having me pull them out there in the bike trailer so they can sit and watch me water and weed. I'm loving our little outdoor space as we expand and learn and play out there... and we can't wait to see where the rest of the season takes us.