A Yard Makeover

Some blooms on the lilac bush in my back yard.

Suburban Garden:

Spring is here! After a long winter break from our blog we are ready to come back and write about our garden happenings as well as other projects! We are excited about this gardening season and the new hope it brings!

A view of our new raised bed garden.

My (Trista's) yard project started out with a big attitude change and a different outlook on the work. I decided to think about how I could get the yard looking nice little by little instead of being overwhelmed by the project. In years past I have just put flowers in pots and tended just a little to the flower beds and rest of the yard. However, this year I wanted to work hard on all aspects of the yard to make it be the best it could be. I realized I already had so many nice plants, trees and shrubs and with those assets I could build such a nice garden over time. This "baby step" approach to doing a little bit every day has really helped!

After consulting with my Mom we came up with a much better raised garden design for our backyard. Then, my sweet husband Paul built it for me! Last year we had three separate cinder block raised beds. One contained rhubarb and strawberries, another blueberry bushes and another held a pumpkin plant and the sweet potatoes that never amounted to anything.

One of the raspberry bushes that I planted.

My Mom came up with a nice plan that went along the lines of our deck and integrated the rhubarb/strawberry bed with the blueberry bed farther away. Now we have one integrated fruit and vegetable garden. It looks great! And, best of all we were able to reuse all of our existing cinder blocks. We just added concrete blocks on top to stop weeds and grass from growing through. Also, we are in the process of putting in a pea gravel "moat" around the garden so it is easier to mow along the side and we avoid having to weed or use a string trimmer in those areas. It looks so wonderful and a part of our landscape! Also, for the extra space in the garden I decided to add herbs and raspberry plants. The herbs I planted include lavender, rosemary, boxwood basil, oregano, thyme, tarragon and parsley. I also want to plant some sage. Later on in the season I'll plant tomatoes, large leaf basil and various lettuces. I'm very excited about my suburban garden this year!

Adam in the garden near a boxwood basil plant.

Along with the raised bed garden makeover I decided to re-edge the lawn. This involved a week or two of heavy labor. I hand dug the edge again creating a nice border and much neater flower beds. Thanks to the wonderful edging tool that our neighbor Betty let me borrow along with a new square shovel that we bought I was able to dig out the edge and it turned out very nicely. It is amazing what a difference it makes! Adam had fun filling up his wagon with the extra sod, dirt and weeds and hauling them off! Every day I would do a bit of edging or weeding as Adam played in the yard. This sure paid off!

Another view of our raised bed garden.

We had a large pile of topsoil delivered as well as a large pile of mulch. We used the topsoil to fill in the garden. My husband Paul helped with this project too. He took many, many loads of dirt back in a wheelbarrow to the garden. Unfortunately one evening while he was shoveling up some dirt to put in the wheelbarrow he got a nail stuck in his shoe and foot! It must have been in the dirt pile somewhere! It was a very scary moment when he asked me to get some vice grips to try to get the nail out of his shoe! I was so scared that the nail went far into his foot! Luckily he was able to get the nail out and it had only gone in about 1/4 inch or so. Even so, he had a lot of pain and swelling for quite a while in that foot! Quite a gardening accident!! He is doing much better now and I am so thankful!!

The side yard that I finally landscaped with annuals and perennials.

Thanks to my Aunt Janet who has a lovely, large perennial flower garden at her house I was able to get a lot of new plants for my flower beds and also finally landscape our side yard which I had attempted to do halfheartedly in the past. My Aunt Janet gave me many lovely plants including a hydrangea bush, lilies of the valley, black eyed susan daisies, solomon's seal, water irises and many more! They look lovely in the side yard and in the main yard in my flowering borders mixed with trees and shrubs.

A view of our back yard.

So, with help from many others and lots of hard work our yard is really looking pretty this year and I hope it will produce a lot of fruit, veggies and herbs to enjoy in salads throughout the summer!

Country Garden:

The country garden ready to be tilled.

My Mom and Dad have been working really hard in their garden as well. We'll be heading out there later this week to take a look at all of their work and see how things are progressing. In the meantime I'll let you know what I've seen so far and what is coming next.

The chickens are enjoying their new area.

The chickens have been moved to a different fenced off area with lots of grass and a nice tree to stand under for shade. They sure seem to like to congregate there. Earlier this spring they also spent a long time in the garden cleaning out the weeds and "fertilizing" the soil! What a great job- thanks ladies!!

A patch of rhubarb.

My parents have completely and thoroughly weeded the garden including removing a lot of blackberry vines from around the rose bushes and blueberry bushes which will help a great deal! Then, my Dad was finally able to do a nice job of tilling the garden this year. It was ready to plant potatoes a few days ago and they were able to plant 3 large rows! Also, their peas have been planted. Their boysenberries and raspberries look very healthy as well.

They have planted many new fruit tress in their orchard including apples, plums and cherries. The trees are coming along quite nicely.

Adam near some blackberries that will be full of berries this summer.

I will have a more detailed report coming later on in the week when we visit "the farm" as my 2 1/2 year old son Adam likes to call it!

Weather:

A quick note on our weather:

Although it is sunny right now as I write this on May 10, 2011 it has been a pretty cold and wet spring and this was confirmed by the report sent to me by my Mom- Serena in the NOAA report. It says:

"The Northwest was much cooler than normal during April. Washington State (second coolest, five degrees F below their long-term average), Oregon (fifth coolest) and Idaho (10th coolest) were all much cooler than normal."

And later on in the report it states:

"Temperatures during the February-April period, when averaged across the nation, were near the 20th century average. However, the Northwest was cooler than normal, while the South and East coasts were above- to much-above normal."

So, our weather here in Oregon was quite cold this spring!

Hopefully it will warm up soon and we will be able to plant our warmer weather plants such as tomatoes and basil on time for them to grow to maturity by harvest time.

Here's to hope and hard work!

Rural Garden, Suburban Garden

Rural Garden Report:

Our dill isn't coming up, even though we planted it about three weeks ago. There are a lot of little plants there, but I think they are weeds. The cold and wet period between the time we planted it and now is a reminder that Pacific Northwest weather has its own challenges. Although we don't have freezing past the middle of April, the rain, rain, rain hampers seedling growth. It's warming up and drying out, so we will try again. It shows us that no matter what a seed packet says ("plant 1 week after last frost"), we have to pay attention to local conditions. We will buy another packet of dill seeds and try again.

I (Serena) have been hardening off the tomato and pepper seedlings that have fully developed true leaves. I put them out on the deck in an area that gets a couple of hours of sun a day, and then the rest of the day it is partial sun. I think I can more them to a sunnier spot now that they have had time outdoors with some direct sun. The soil in the garden is not yet warm enough for us to plant them, however, by my reckoning. I don't have a thermometer yet.

Since some of our seedlings didn't develop, I decided to plant a few more. There were two pepper types that didn't germinate well, so I thought with longer and warmer days, they might do better now. Well, we did get some more, but I have learned that Ancho peppers do have to have a lot of warmth. I ended up putting the little pots into a plastic bag in my sunny south kitchen window. They liked that, and most of them germinated. I did even better with the Tolli's Italian Red Pepper. Meanwhile, the seedlings that we planted a while back in the garden like the cabbage pictured above are doing very well!

I also started some flower seedlings: bloodflower, spider flower, columbines, and blanket flower, and snapdragons. They are all coming up, even the native columbine seeds I got from Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Since they are native to this area and came to Jefferson from Lewis and Clark, I am excited about this, as I hope to reintroduce them to our woodlands.

We want to move the young chickens outdoors this weekend, and also would like to fence the area next to the garden and orchard so that the older chickens can work on that spot. Those chickens spend a lot of time over by the garden where they used to dig worms, and are looking at it rather wistfully. I think they miss both the worms and the greens. It will be good to get them into a larger area that isn't so picked over.

We got the rest of our new trees fenced, so they are protected from deer now. The deer managed to get at one more tree before we finished the project, but fortunately the tree still has plenty of leaves.

Trista and Adam came today, and it is beautiful! The sky is blue, and the temperature is in the 70s. Trista brought along some organic potatoes she had bought at the supermarket, but since they are sprouting we have decided to plant them. We should have plenty of potatoes now!

Adam discovered rhubarb today! He brought the first stalk to his mother, and when she ate it, he decided he ought to get another for her. After picking that, he brought it to her, but not without tasting it first. He is pretty adventurous, and likes most everything, so we are not surprised.

Suburban Garden Report:


In my (Trista's) backyard the plants in our new raised beds made out of concrete cinder blocks are doing very well for the most part. Most of the plants I have planted in these are ones that I had elsewhere but they weren't getting enough sun where they were. In the bed where I have 2 rhubarb plants and some strawberry plants one of the rhubarb plants is really starting to thrive while the other is rather lackluster. It is probably still shocked from the move earlier this spring.


On the other side of the planter my everbearing strawberry plants are thriving! This is their third year and they have many strawberries forming on them as well as many more blooms. Before they were in large pots but I think having more soil and sunlight has done wonders for them.


In another area my six blueberry plants are slowly getting healthier. One of the plants is considerably larger than the rest and actually has a few berries starting to form on it. The other plants are just getting up to speed so they won't produce any berries this year.

The third planter just contains our one "sharecropper" pumpkin plant and some soil covered in black plastic awaiting the peanuts and sweet potatoes that I plant to plant there later on in the summer when the soil has warmed up considerably.

I have also tried to plant some flower seeds in outdoor pots. I have had varied success with this due to the cold and wet weather that was mentioned above, as well as the squirrels who dig up the ground for their hidden nuts or places to put them! After almost giving up I noticed last weekend that many of my nasturtiums have finally come up. Some pots have many seedlings while others have none or one! I will fill in with other seeds or small starts later on. I also planted my front yard planter with blanketflower and marigold seeds so hopefully those will come up soon with the warmer weather.

See you again next week!

Potatoes and . . .

A week of interesting happenings ended with us finally being able to prepare the garden for potatoes and get them planted. The beginning of the week was really last Friday evening, after we posted our first blog post. We had planted three new fruit trees first thing that morning - a Green Gage plum, and two apples - Macintosh and Granny Smith. When putting the chickens in the chicken house, we decided to take a walk to see the rest of the orchard, and it was a good thing we did. A deer had decided to lunch on the Granny! We quickly surrounded each new tree with some fencing, so at least they are okay, but we don't have the fencing completely secure yet. More on that later.


We had a colder than average week, but at least it didn't freeze. We like to check NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) for weather information, and discovered that they had other information for gardeners. One we really appreciated was their recommendations for fertilizer to protect our environment all the way from here to coral reefs. Chicken poop is at the top of their list! Humus is right behind! That seemed so funny, yet so nice, to know how our little chicken/egg/poop producers can help to save the planet.

In order to diversify, we planted four kinds of potatoes. If we're planning to eat all this good stuff, after all, who wants to eat the same old thing all the time? Monocultures are for industrial farmers, and we want to stay away from that as far as we can get. We hand-dug the bed because the soil is still pretty damp. Trista's son Adam even had fun getting in on the act with his little trowel! There was a nice breeze, so while we had lunch the soil had a chance to dry out a little, and we could get on with planting. We checked the recommendations from our local university, which suggested planting them 4 to 6 inches deep and about 1 foot apart in the row, with three feet between rows. Okay, we're all set.

All Blue potatoes went in first. We chose them because they aren't just pretty, they are supposed to have a higher vitamin and mineral content. We might as well be healthy along with all this diversity, right? Next we planted All Red. I think we might have a patriotic theme going here. The remaining potatoes we planted are the familiar Yukon Golds and last in was German Butterball.

We are harvesting rhubarb and chives right now. Permanent plantings are sure nice this time of year. The rhubarb will go into a pie, and the chives are going to have a starring role in some of Trista's lovely bread. Recipes will be coming soon!