April 3, 2011

Ya dig it?

Do you ever just have such a great weekend that it actually makes Monday not seem so bad? I know that sounds weird, you would think that if you had an awesome weekend you would just dread Monday right? But because I am the resident weirdo, to me, this weekend was just so fulfilling that even though I have to wake up at 4:30 in the AM to go to work tomorrow, im actually looking forward to it.

I know, I know your asking yourself WHAT could I have possibly done for my weekend to be THAT good. Well... I did some gardening. Yep. I am 26yrs old and I spent my weekend painting [more on that later in the week] and gardening. Does this mean I have officially crossed over into 'I'm old' status?


So here is part of the backyard. It's the 'side yard', that goes up along the side of the house. This area gets sunlight pretty much for the whole day. We have 3 large oak tree's back here so the rest of the yard is shady a lot so this was the perfect spot to create a garden.


First we measured the area and than got to work 'tilling' up the grass and dirt [talk about a major workout]!


After a trip to Lowes to buy some landscaping timbers and what seemed like a truck load of top soil, we returned home to cut and screw the boards together.


Next up... Reading about how I can score some awesome Tax breaks... or not. No this paper was going into the bottom of the garden [on top of the original soil]. Newspapers today are printed with safe inks, and pigments are binded together using soy-based oils and all printed with non-toxic chemicals [unlike papers from back in the day]. Lining the bottom of your garden with newspaper helps prevent weed-seeds from germinating because it keeps all light out and traps moisture and from what I have heard from other people who use this method is that it works FAR better than your plastic, nylon and or rubber products.


So we have the paper lined at the bottom of our garden, held down with clumps of dirt.


Lastly was filling the garden with bags of top soil [we used about 12 bags [$0.98 @ Lowes] for our 8x6 area] and than planted our seeds.


What did we plant you ask?


Some of my favorite Herbs and Veggies [I really can't wait for some of those cucumbers]!


On another related note, Josh moved the Solar panel over to the corner of this part of the yard also, because of all the sunlight. What are our plans for this?


We will be attaching a section of gutter to this end of the house [which is right next to the Garden].


Which will than lead to a future rain barrel that will sit in that corner [once the wire for the panel is moved of course]. Luckily we already have the barrel, we just need to buy the kit and set it all up. We're hoping to create some sort of pump [well that would be josh creating it, im just hoping] that will be hooked to the solar panel, that way whenever I need to water the veggies I can use the water from the barrel [hose and pressure].

So we will be growing veggies and helping them grow by using water from our rain barrel which will be run using energy from the sun. How cool is that!? Now let's just hope my veggies actually grow and that those pesky Box Worms stay away!!!

What about you.. Any Gardening this year?

6 comments:

  1. Yep! This would make my Monday too! I want to have a garden of veggies so bad! I am 31 and been talking about having one since I was 26! Good for you. Good tip about the newspapers too. Good luck and happy gardening!

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  2. How fun! I love gardens...especially ones that produce yummy veggies (:

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  3. Great idea! I wish I had a yard to do this in!

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  4. I've been wanting to do one of these, but I know the responsibility will be soley mine. Not sure if I want that much work. Keep us posted on what you grow.

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  5. I love this! I have a black thumb but maybe I could make a raised garden bed with some hard to kill plants.

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  6. Love this!! I've been begging the hubster to let me do this in a spot in our yard and I think this is the year he's finally going for it! I spent $12 on tomatoes the other day and that was enough to get him to say yes!! Yours looks fabulous!

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I enjoy reading all of your lovely comments! :)