more garden work - spring/summer 2008

after the orchard was planted, immediate need dictated landing a drip irrigation system to the trees, to alleviate the need for me to hand water the new bare root trees. i had just landed water up at the top of the hill, so all i needed to do was 't' off the main line and put drip lines to the trees. this was done by the middle of march and my attention again was directed away from the garden and to landscaping the front yard.

the month of april showed up and part of my garden plan included a fence to help keep the critters out. joe lamp'ls setup on his show (photo courtesy of diy and joe lamp'l) had some good ideas for a fence as well as an electric fence to keep the deer out. deer are an ongoing challenge where i live, so keeping them out of my garden had to be part of the ultimate plan. joes garden had a lot of ideas that were easily adaptable for my situation and other than my higher fence height, i didnt have to do too much modification to make it work for me.

we had a dry spring in '08, so it allowed me to rake up the accumulation of needles that had gathered since my last cleanup. the needles, plus downed limbs made for a huge fire pile, which i burned in march. the day we lit that fire off was a lot fun, my neighbors were a bit surprised how big the fire was - but in the end all was well and burning the stuff saved me a ton of effort and cost to haul it off.

i started installing my garden fence in april and got 3 out four sides completed by fall. in between the fence work, i had several tasks to do, which included uplimbing the huge pine trees to open up more sunlight. I also had to remove 8 trees to open up more space (as well as eliminate a future shading problem). I also had some stump grinding tasks to clear areas for future bed placement. i also had to dig trenches to extend the water down the garden and into the backyard.

2007 - a decent tomato season and an idea is born

2007's tomato season turned out to better from a couple of aspects. there was no improvement in the garden area, as 2007 was dedicated to the completion of the front yard landscaping - but taking the ques from 2006, i planted 12 tomato plants and did so in amended holes.

what a world of difference....

production was pretty good, i tended to be a bit heavy on heirloom varieties, this year, thus my numbers werent as big as they could be - but i did now know that with properly amended soil, i could get a decent crop of tomatoes. as for varieties - i didnt write them down, but henceforth will do so in this blog. and i will also be sure i have plenty of tried and true hybrid varieties to off-set unpredictable heirloom production.

this was the year that i saw a garden setup that i knew was for me. historically, my garden has performed yeoman duty - producing well in the summer, but when fallow it was an eyesore. that summer, i found a program called 'fresh from the garden', hosted by joe lamp'l on the diy network.

he had a garden, based upon raised beds that produced well and was pleasing to the eye. raised beds solved 2 of my problems - eye appeal and better soil. in addition, he had several good ideas on how to setup various types of trellises that will be handy in my garden.

now that i had an idea of what i was going to do, i would have some to time to let the ideas stew up in my noodle - and like stew, pizza, chili - ideas - seem to get better over time, as i think out problems and more importantly opportunities in my head. things i pondered about - what to make the beds out of, layout of the beds, sizes, how to overcome my slope and much, much more.