State of the Yard Address

A lot of my hopes for the yard have been dashed lately. I know that in the end this will all be for the best, since we'll be getting a topsoil layer to help make our rocky terrain more useful for growing stuff. But right now...

THIS is my poor garden. It had to be moved out of the way when the yard was being excavated. Hopefully it will be put back together by the end of the week, at which point we can FINALLY plant these guys:

The garden wasn't the only casualty of the landscaping work. Our poor little trees were subjected to some stress as well. Look at the oil left behind by the machines!

There is some good news, though--while inspecting the fruit trees, we found that some of them had fruit beginning to grow:

 Sadly, many of the little fruits fell off thanks to the machinery, but some still remain and now we are looking forward to some fruit from our own yard!

Oh, and that rock area we created? Gone, too. Well, I guess it's all to make way for bigger and better things, so it will be worth it. Right now, my back yard is quite desolate. At least all of the weeds are gone!

Catch-up for this week...

Seeds are sprouting!
Tomatoes are doing the best so far. There are a few peppers and lettuce seeds just starting to show their little green selves, too.

This little guy? That's a freakin' Canby thornless raspberry. For sers. This is going in my yard! FTW! Did I ever mention how much I love raspberries? Well, it's a LOT.

Aaand...here is the totally finished raised garden bed, complete with the soil mix, square foot gardening sections laid out, and PEAS planted! Awesome.

I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I could probably fool a few people at this point. Let's see what actually happens...

We did it!

A few hours on a nice warm spring day, and the garden bed project is done!

 D. was oh so willing to help a TON with this project. Don't get the wrong idea, though, because I worked my ass off too! D. is just more photogenic than I am. Plus, he knows how to use a drill, so there you go.

Thanks, D., for the pose.

We drove out to Lowe's once we'd built and moved the wooden bed. We stuffed 12 bags of topsoil, 10 bags of manure, and some peat moss into two small-ish cars. Believe it or not, it smelled worse outside the cars than inside on the ride home (thanks to the mink farms we passed on the road).

Haul. Dump. Mix. And...we misjudged how much we would need, but we got the bed 3/4 full anyway.

We'll have to hurry and get the rest in there so I can plant the peas!

Materials: Check!

Another trip to Lowe's, and we now have the supplies for the garden bed.

The materials we ended up getting cost about $60. This includes screws, some drill bits, the wood, and some stakes.

We were planning to use cedar or pine as suggested in the guide we're following for this project, but the store did not have those kinds in the wood size we needed. We found Douglas Fir to be a less expensive solution, and it came in the right size. I understand that this kind of wood will rot faster, but since we are only planning to stay in this house for a few years it should be okay in the long run. Hopefully it will hold up as long as we're here, but I don't really know what to expect. This is all one big adventure, isn't it?

We've estimated that the cost of soil to fill the bed will probably be another $60, since we can literally use none of the native soil and will need to bring everything in. This little project is getting somewhat expensive, but I knew going in that starting up would require an initial cost.

Now to put the thing together.