In January of every year I feel this need to start planning my summer garden. I imagine the ripening vegetables and the beautiful green beds, watered on timers with just a few weeds to pick as I walk through looking for a zucchini or a cucumber. I manage to forget every time about the effort required to get the garden looking like that. This is what March and April are for. To take my garden, which has become a garden of weeds like this...
And turn it into the clean beds waiting for seeds or seedlings like this...
I took a few extra days off a few weeks ago to do all that weeding, which took 3 days mind you with help. Mom and I spent Thursday, Saturday and Monday mornings clearing one space at a time and loading up 5 full wheelbarrows of weeds that went to eagerly waiting chickens.
Then Monday afternoon we spent 3 hours trying to get the irrigation on and finally succeeded, much to the relief of the peas, carrots, onions and radishes that have been only watered sporadically since they were planted in the middle of March. We haven't had much rain this spring and getting the water on was a desperate thing for all of our fruit trees as well. While the nights have been getting below freezing, it looks like we may still get cherries.
And our other fruit trees are doing well and it's possible we may have pears for the first time this year!
The new peach and almond trees are doing well and our apricot flowered earlier this spring, so we'll be waiting eagerly to see what fruits we get later this summer and fall.
I already have tomato and pepper seedlings started and getting them going and transplanted is all old hat at this point.
And we've also been slowly working towards improving a corner of our garage that was once used as a shop area and turning it into a potting bench. This is in the garage closest to the vegetable garden, so it would be great for keeping all those items we need when we're out there, rather than walking all the way back to the Tuff Shed in the yard that is the current home for all those tools. During our last yard sale we got back far enough into the other garage to find an old hutch that was my great-grandmother's. It was her baking cabinet and used to be attached to a base that had bins for flour and sugar, but that part is long gone. It was just sitting in there un-used and left wanting. So Mom and I decided to put it on the bench, give it a good coat of new paint and use it to hold potting and gardening supplies.
Before...
And after!
I chose a light green to lighten up the space and it took two coats to cover the pink. You can see it coming through in a few places, but it makes it quaint. We bought some new knobs for the drawers that are still waiting to be painted and I tried to convince Mom that we needed the ones that looked like little trowels and spades. For some reason she didn't think we needed to pay $15 a knob for something that was going in the garage. ;) I, of course, have Pinterest dreams for this area. Baskets hanging from the rafters, old jars and bottles on shelves, twinkle lights to brighten the area and pots, trowels and assorted gardening supplies placed in aesthetically appealing messiness. I'll keep you updated...
