Birthday Gardening Gifts, Part 1

Today is my 31st birthday, and all of the sweet, generous people in my life have done such nice things for me! Naturally, many of them are gardening-related. Check out my two gifts from my husband, Scott:
1. A huge, incredibly sturdy contraption for growing peas (fall/winter) and cucumbers (summer) in one of the existing raised beds:
(This picture is taken from above. This is a 4x4 raised bed.)

2. A waterfall for the pond:
I love the sound of the water! The waterfall basin is partially filled with rocks to create a bathing area for birds. I can't wait until it gets cold enough for the mosquitoes to die so we can really enjoy this area!
Is he sweet or what?! Part 2 of this post will be gardening gifts from my other friends and family - I am spoiled!
Have a great week!

The Backyard Chronicles: A History

I've written before about the undeveloped state of the backyard when I bought this house. Unfortunately, I don't have a "before" picture (because it was nothing anyone would want a picture of!), but here is a representation:
The brown area is DIRT! The bright green is grass that migrated from the neighbor's yard. The top left area is sort of a wild area with small trees.
Since then: The magnolia was very sickly, so we had it cut down. The concrete stairs had migrated away from the back door, so we had a deck put in above them. Scott also installed a chain-link fence for the dog, and built raised beds for me. We put compost bins in the wild area, and otherwise left it as-is for small animal habitat. We put in a couple of beds, edged for now in spare brick.

The yard was looking better, and the grass was slowly spreading, but the dirt was still a big problem. The yard has poor drainage, which is not only annoying, but very bad for our poor foundation. We installed a sort of french drain in one really bad area (it was impossible to give it an outlet, so it has a deep hole at the "end" filled with rocks), and decided to try growing grass in another. We put in 50 blocks of sod today, which made a significant dent in the field of dirt. Scott decided that it would be fun to put in a small fish pond as well:

Here is the raised bed area viewed from the top right of the diagrams above:

The raised bed area from in front of the compost area:

Towards compost area from edge of new grassy area:

Toward house from in front of compost area:

Old herb area in one of the raised beds:

...moved to next to the new grassy area this weekend (see beer bottle garden in background):

Partially-sunk 100-gallon pre-formed pond liner in the ground:

Same surrounded by 50 blocks of St. Augustine sod:

Same from a different angle:

The next step is to add rock edging around the pond, and some plants in and out of the pond. We'll get a pump/filter and a few goldfish after that. We may add some more sod to the remaining dirt area eventually, depending on how well this does. Or we may just let this and the grass in the other part of the yard meet in the middle!

Advice is welcome!!!

You know you have clay soil when...

...your raised beds hold water!

Granted, it rained a lot yesterday.

We often have standing water in the yard after heavy rains, but I've never seen it gather in the raised beds like this. They usually drain straightaway. It appears that the clay underneath the raised beds had all (the water) it could take!

One MILLION dollars, er, I mean, pounds of dirt

The warm weather had us feeling ambitious this weekend, so I decided to create another bed along the fence (where the "X" is below), and Scott decided to build two new raised beds for our vegetable garden.

Once again, digging up the weeds in the new bed area was tough. The tine on this cultivator bent and then the wood handle snapped! Oh well, it's quite old and was a hand-me-down, so we weren't devastated (seriously, when did JC Penney sell branded gardening tools?).

I had my Austin Powers/Dr. Evil moment with the cultivator's severed head/hand:

"I know what we need - one MILLION pounds of dirt!" And so it was...

We rented a truck from Lowe's and got three yards of Mrs. Hutto's bedding mix. This ended up being much cheaper than having dirt delivered or buying it in bags. We needed a lot for filling the two raised beds and working into the clay in the new fence bed.

Here is my wonderful husband building one of the new raised beds:

Here is the new fence bed. I really want to plant hydrangeas here, and maybe some daylilies. It's in part shade. What do y'all think? Any tips or recommendations?

One of the new raised beds is on the right. The other one will go in the bottom right corner after we get an old stump ground this week.
And in a month or so, some of these babies will be planted in the raised beds!

So far beefsteak tomato, yellow pear tomato, basil, and some annual flowers have sprouted. I have to give a shout out to Botanical Interests. I am a sucker for pretty packaging, but didn't expect their seeds to be anything special. It turns out their seeds are incredible in both germination rate and speed. Some germinated in three days!

I love checking on my seeds every day and finding new life!

The Raised Beds in Winter

The raised beds didn't get much of a workout this winter thanks to the seed tape disaster, but my herbs and a few overwintered plants are chugging along:

The strawberry bed shared space with shallots. The idea was that the shallots would be ready to harvest before the strawberries started taking over the bed this spring. We'll see! Here is a closeup of one of the shallots. Talk about an easy thing to grow.




Perennials sage, rosemary, oregano and thyme, and biennial parsley are pretty much no-care plants as well.

I dug the mint out of the raised bed after it started taking over. It's been living happily in a pot ever since.

Cilantro started from seed. I love cilantro and enjoy growing it during the cooler parts of the year, even though it's cheap to buy.

That great looking black dirt in the cilantro photo is from my compost bin! Other than adding homemade compost from time to time, I don't do much to the raised beds. I let the pinestraw fall where it may and it doesn't seem to hurt anything. The beds are full of earthworms despite the fact that I laid down some of that weed barrier matting when the beds were new! There are very few weed problems, but all of the beneficial insects you'd find in the ground. Can you tell I'm a fan of raised beds? Scott is a little concerned our backyard may turn into a maze of raised beds! Is that a bad thing?