My New Garden: It’s Working!

I have been working my proverbial ass off getting my new garden ready for fall, and it’s finally almost complete. First I had to deal with a giant cherry stump, and then rake away a few inches’ worth of debris and yuckiness, and THEN I learned that the whole garden was just one big weed bed that would have to be dug up by hand. Fun! But it’s almost done, and it has been so worth it.

The garden runs along the length of our house, which is long and narrow, and so is the garden. So, there are the veggie and flower beds at the front (near the gate), then there is the area where we’ll put garden furniture eventually, then there’s my elderberry and red clover bed, and at the back there are two compost stalls and extra space for my tools. Here are some photos of all of my hard work.

This is a baby elderberry shrub, which will eventually grow to be six feet in diameter and at least that tall, providing a screen so garden visitors don’t see the compost stalls from the gate. To keep the weeds down in this bed, and to fix some much-needed nitrogen, I planted some red clover seeds that are now happily sprouting.

Here’s my “potting bench,” which is really just some seedling flats on top of a sheet of wood that’s on top of two sawhorses. Ted made the flats for me, by the way!

Here are the two compost stalls. The one on the left is full of spring compost, and the one on the right is for fall compost.

This is the digging-up process I just finished, it was quite a project. I’d have to soak the ground overnight (or two days out, if it was really hard), use a digging spade to dig out about a foot of dirt, use my digging fork to loosen the soil below, and yank out the weeds. Yes, blackberries are weeds. Do you see those cute, little blackberry tops sticking out of the ground?

Well, below is one of those blackberries, root and all, lying next to my gloves for size comparison. Not so cute now, huh?

I now have a garden that’s almost completely blackberry-free, and today I’m plotting out the rest of my beds. If I have time, I’m even going to plant my perennials. What a dork I’ve become!