The Garden

After years of having the empty space in our backyard we finally got our act together and planted a vegetable garden. It only took us 4 trips to Home Depot and 1 trip to Green Thumb.

Here you can see how hard we both worked. We debated long and hard about the format. We knew we wanted raised beds because the last time we planted a garden it was well enjoyed by bugs and snails. Our soil is like cement and trying to plant anything in the clay is ridiculous. I built a fence in the front yard a few months ago and wile digging in the dirt I ended up seriously hurting my thumb. Got a condition called "trigger thumb" which lasted many months. Sue wanted one or two large boxes and I thought some smaller ones would be better.

We bought four smaller boxes and the dirt with our first trip to Home Depot. In these two boxes we planted lettuce. We made a second trip for wood to build some bigger boxes and dirt. We spent about an hour looking at sprinkler stuff. The car would only hold so much so we made a third trip to get more dirt. Then a fourth trip for more sprinker parts.

Here is one of our sprinkler feeds. It fits onto our regular sprinker pipe and is called a microsprinkler system. Looks kind of like an octopus. We have hoses going all over the place to all the boxes and fruit trees.

Our end product. Along the fence is corn and onions. The far box has tomatoes, zucchini, green onions, and radishes which have already sprouted. The little boxes have lettuce (romaine and endive) and carrots. The closer box has watermelon, walla walla onions, basil, and parsley. Inbetween are our two apple trees and an orange tree we planted late last summer. My mom says she will come over when we are away and pick our vegetables. Almost as soon as we planted the seeds the birds started having a snack.

We also planted in the backyard some flowers so I can take Rebecca on our excurions; special grandpa-granddaughter bonding time.