Garden

I spent the majority of my weekend removing various weeds and small saplings from the once pristine garden bed that was used by the family who lived at our home prior to the ones who foreclosed.

The garden bed is on the west side of the garage. It lay fallow during the occupancy of the people before us and appears to have been used as a dumping ground for grass clippings during the past summer. This is actually a good thing as it kept a lot of weeds down in the center of the garden, but it was a lot of stuff to shift.



I thought I had a shot of it in the full glory of weed infestation, but the shot looking over the fence from the backyard will have to do.



That view is into a bunch of raspberry bushes and several small saplings. The weeds were roughly waist high throughout the 11 1/2' x 22 1/2' plot.

This is what the garden bed looks like now.




The raspberry bushes now.


All of the saplings have been cleared out. They were volunteers from neighboring trees. I trimmed the raspberries in the fall so we will see how they come up this year. Considering how well they did with plenty of neglect last year I'm hoping they do just as well with some TLC.



I did the whole thing by hand because I did not want a tiller to break up the weeds and roots and work them into the soil more, I actually wanted them out. The worm population is doing really well and I sure they appreciated that I took the time with a hand cultivator and rake. It did take me 2 solid days to do it, but I'm very pleased with the results. I do feel like I have been hit by a truck. Tonight I'm putting in the seeds: lettuce, beans, peas, beets, onions, spinache, and sunflowers. I'll be planting tomatoes and cucumbers from seedlings in May. Pumpkins will go in around then as well. There may be other crops, but we will see how the garden handles what I already have planned.