Tag Archive for: Raised Vegetable Garden

Slowly, but Surely….

I must admit that it has taken me longer then I thought to get over the flu.  It must be my age, but it seems like getting over being sick just sucks out any energy I have.

The other day, I walked by my son’s room and noticed that he was being really quiet….

Star Wars figurines

He had fallen asleep on the floor, playing with the little plastic weapons from his Star Wars figurines.

Please disregard the messy room – but Saturday is room cleaning day and I took this photo on Thursday 😉

Sometimes, I feel like falling asleep on the floor.

I have been getting busy with consults because the weather is cooling off and people are starting to venture outside again.

I have found time to do a little light pruning of my roses.

roses

Okay, I know that my roses look rather ugly – but all roses that grow in our area go through an ‘ugly’ stage in summer.

While we are very lucky that we have two growing seasons for roses (spring and fall) – roses are not fans of our hot, dry summers.

Their leaves get sunburned and if any roses form, they are small and dry out quickly.  This is normal.  Roses go somewhat dormant during summer and just exist until the cooler weather of fall arrives.

So once September arrives, it’s time to prune your roses back by 1/4 of their total size.  Then add the rose fertilizer of your choice, mixed with compost.  I make 6 – 8 holes around each of my roses, about 6″ deep and pour the fertilizer/compost mixture into them and then water deeply.

I only have three roses bushes, so this only took about 15 minutes to do it all.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was driving home from a consult, I noticed a home that had raised vegetable garden beds in their front yard.

cool-season vegetables

cool-season vegetables

I can only imagine how much they grow.  I have two vegetable gardens in the back garden.  Our HOA won’t allow me to put any in the front 😉

Last year at this time, I had all my vegetable seeds planted by September 5th.

This yearI have done nothing yet.

Thankfully, there is a window for planting that extends from September through October for most cool-season vegetables.

My plan is to get it all done by next weekend.  I made sure that my husband had time in his schedule to help me add the compost and manure and then I’ll get my seeds planted.

How about you?  Have you planted your vegetables yet?

A Box of Seeds and an Impatient Gardener…

The Beginning….

new vegetable garden, New Seeds
p class=”has-text-align-center” style=”font-size:14px;”> Beginning of my new vegetable garden for new seeds

This is the ‘beginning’ of my new vegetable garden!

It’s also my Christmas/Birthday gift from my husband.

I love my existing vegetable garden, but every year, I wish that I had more space to grow more vegetables.  After all, I have five kids and four of them are still living at home and they all like vegetables.

The garden will be raised, so we visited our local big box store (whose initials are THD).  We purchased compost, aged steer manure, wood for the sides of the garden, slats for the garden fence (to keep the dogs out), rebar to build supports for shade cloth in the summer, fasteners, bone meal, blood meal and irrigation supplies.

My sister and my two strong nephews came over yesterday to help us.  My nephews are 15 & 17 years old and have tons of energy, which is so welcome to this 46 year old 😉

My granddaughter, Lily, also came out to see what we were doing, but she found it a bit boring….

existing vegetable garden

So, she stayed on the patio, next to my existing vegetable garden.

The quilt in the photo above, was made for my oldest daughter (Lily’s mother) by my mother.  Now Lily gets to use it.

The garden is progressing very well.  It is now day two and we are finished digging up the top 8 inches of existing soil.  My husband will be building the frame for the garden today and we’ll start to add the compost and manure and mix in with the existing soil.

Stay tuned for our progress.

I am just so excited!

I can’t wait to plant my new seeds next week!!!

Vegetable Garden Progress