A Busy Spring
I still consider myself a novice gardener. I mean, sure, I’ve been growing tomatoes and basil for years, but when it comes to gardening on a large scale, I still find myself making mistakes aplenty and running to my gardening books for everything I need to know.
As such, I never really thought about what a very busy time Spring is for the gardener. Last year was so busy because we had to clear the land, build raised beds, and build a chicken coop (and when I say we, I mean Justin). I figured this year would be simple: grow seedlings and pop them into the ground. Yet I am starting to realize that projects are ongoing, and the rest period for the gardener is…winter.
Read on to find out about this years’ homestead plans, and check out the video below. And leave me a comment about what your gardening plans are this year!
Clearing the Beds
One of the first steps is to clear away weeds and old plants from the raised beds. The spring rains are bringing up the weeds, and some beds are being taken over by them. Clearing all of that away will give me a chance to plant the seedlings when they are ready.
Additionally, I need to lay down irrigation. I took it up last year with the intent to transition to a half inch irrigation line than runs the length of each raised bed, with quarter inch lines delivering water to the plants. It’s a big project, and I’m eager to tackle it to get it out of the way.
Building an Herb Garden
Last year I put most of the herbs in the raised beds, with some in pots on the deck. This year I want to devote more space to growing other vegetables, so I decided to transform this unused nook next to the deck. It’s scrappy and scraggly, but I will change that by building a little wall out of bricks, filling it with good soil, and planting/transplanting herbs.
Clearing the Rubble
As you may remember, before we planted anything last year we (Justin) had to clear away an old garage foundation. It took him three weekends in a row with a rented jack hammer. We hired someone to haul most of it, but there were plenty of bits and pieces left over. It’s not fun to walk over it. I want gardening to be enjoyable, not frustrating, and it was certainly frustrating every time I tripped over rubble. So another project of ours will be to clear away the rubble and put down wood chips.
Ideally, we would also like to move our picnic table from the deck to the garden to enjoy meals among the plants, but that all depends on whether we can find an affordable patio table for the deck. Priorities.
Additional Projects
Some additional projects we need to tackle, which aren’t all directly homesteading related, include:
- Clearing vines from the fence so we can plant sweet potato vines along the base
- Setting up the pool (keeps the kids occupied, and gives us a chance to cool off after working hard!)
- Evening out the backyard path and potentially extending it
- Building a coop for quail, and ordering quail eggs ready to hatch
- Weeding the front yard beds and planting more perennials
- Ordering mulch or wood chips and spreading them pretty much everywhere
Phew! That’s a lot. I’ll let you know what we were able to accomplish in the next post. Thanks for reading, everyone, and I’ll see you next time.
Rebekah
