In The Garden :: First Day of Spring

On the first day of spring, Mom and I walked around the garden and decided what our plans should be for this year.  We bought travertine pavers for a walkway-that's-never-going-to-happen about 2 years ago and after fighting weeds beyond measure in between the beds last year, I decided we should put them down in the veggie garden.  I did quite a bit of research on Pinterest about laying paver paths and I realize this is going to be a major endeavor, but I'm excited about it.  We laid some down on top of the soil just to get an idea while we were out there.  The first row of pavers is going to be just straight down the sides of the beds so that we can easily pull them up to get to the PVC pipe underneath, and then we'll do some sort of pattern down the middle.

The strawberries had decided to abandon their beds and grow all over the ground instead, so cleaning out the beds and getting the strawberries back in there is a top priority.  Mom was so excited about it that in the past couple of days she's already gotten a lot of it done!  We had so many strawberries that she's started cleaning up the flower beds close to the house and is putting the leftovers there.  And the rhubarb is also starting to come up already, which is a strawberry's best friend!  I'm imagining pies and cakes and tarts already...

The tops of the beds that are inside the fencing are getting pretty old and most aren't screwed down anymore, so we are probably going to get new wood for them and re-stain all the wood that needs it.

Last year I had troubles with watering the beds.  A couple of soaker hoses split, then as the summer went on most of the soaker hoses got clogged up with algae from the irrigation.  I did some research on better watering systems and found a genius idea on Pinterest using PVC pipes.

I plan on building them to fit the beds and then attaching them to the underground system with small hose sections.  Since you just drill holes in the PVC, if it gets gunked up this summer I'll just take the drill out and clean out the hole!  Mom was worried that there wouldn't be enough water pressure, but I don't plan on having the water on like a sprinkler, more like a good healthy drip.

Other than that it's just the usual clean up of weeds in and around the beds and maybe we'll get to laying some straw between the long beds to keep the weeds from growing too quick!