Garden Expansion

It has been so long since I updated my garden blog that I hardly know where to begin.

Photo by Karen Mawyer

Last year’s garden, with the raised beds we built, and the 7 to 8 foot high fencing we set up to protect it from deer and other creatures, was pretty rewarding. In the fall of last year I planted some late fall crops – collards, lettuce, kale – that we were able to harvest a few times prior to another somewhat frigid winter setting in, and all  of these began producing again in early spring. 
This year we also wanted to try to get a jump on spring by starting some seeds indoors. After spending some pleasant weeks in December and January poring through seed catalogs, we ordered our seeds in early February, and set up a small indoor greenhouse—metel shelves, clear plastic zip-up cover, grow lights. In early March we started some seeds – cabbage, pac choi, 2 kinds of kale, 2 kinds of lettuce, onions, 7 kinds of peppers, and 3 kinds of tomatoes.

Photo by Karen Mawyer

As I write this post, all are doing well.  We’re especially pleased with the tomato plants, which are full and thriving out in their raised beds.

We also decided to expand the vegetable garden, and started hardscaping in March. We soon realized that  our planned expansion was not large enough by half, and re-expanded on a more generous scale, which also increased the size of the ornamental side garden. A sequence of photos tells the tale; the video was taken in mid-April, when it was still spring. Now it’s mid-May and our  garden expansion is more or less complete;  our vegetable garden is more than twice the size it was last year, fully planted and yielding early vegetables—lettuce, kale, collards, leaf cabbages, radishes. Most of these we’ve started from seed – some started indoors, as described above, but most planted directly out of doors, once the danger of frost had passed.

Photo by Karen Mawyer

Photo by Karen Mawyer

Photo by Karen Mawyer

Photo by Karen Mawyer

Last Friday Karen and I drove over to Millmont Greenhouses in Stuarts Draft -- http://www.milmont.com/ --  a pleasant drive of about 38 miles for us, over Afton Mountain and into the Shenandoah Valley, to buy a few more vegetables – more tomatoes and peppers, okra, eggplant.

Odd how the nature of a task, or series of tasks, changes over time.  As my blog posts from last spring relate, the digging and fencing and wiring seemed  last year to require some considerable effort. In retrospect it wasn’t much work at all and neither was doubling the size of the garden. It isn’t really very hard to dig a posthole, or nail up fence wire, or build a gate.

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Moving a gate I crafted last year out of found materials to a new spot in the new fence proved to require a redo, but nothing dramatic.

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Crafting a new gate (as shown in the photos, we’ve got 4 now for the vegetable garden) out of the old door to one of the outbuildings – formerly housing a previous owner’s cow and pig -- that have been on this property for at least 50 or 60 years was child’s play.

Photo by Gary Mawyer

A pallet of cinderblocks can be dealt with expeditiously if moved into position a few at a time and set in place. Garden dirt is heavy but it smells good, and even a modest degree of persistence will make a truckload of it vanish in a few hours.

My next project, now in progress, is the fencing and terracing of a steep weedy angle of hillside beyond the lily beds, on the other side of the house from the vegetable garden. Last year I pursued phase 1 of this project, by fencing an area of our front side yard leading up to and behind the screened porch. I built a gate for this area that harmonizes with the uppermost of the vegetable garden gates on the  other side of the house.  

Photo by Karen Mawyer

I dislike fences and have avoided using them to protect my flowers, flowering bushes and trees, for years, but experience has made it plain that nothing else will hold off the deer. A fence is more deterrent than actual barrier. While this type of fence will deter deer, a raccoon or opossum could climb over easily, but I trust they will not bother. A groundhog could burrow under this fence in time to catch up to the raccoon that climbed it, but one of the premises of my construction is that the animals will accept my fencing for what it is—an invitation to go forage somewhere  easier.

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Photo by Karen Mawyer

The new terraces should be completed in a couple of days, except for the high top terrace, and will serve to grow both vegetables and flowers, with the lower levels  given over to tomatoes, beans, corn, and sweet potatoes, and the top of the terrace,  just a couple of feet below the lily bed , growing flowers.  I hope to be finished with this construction by the end of the month.

Photo by Gary Mawyer

Photo by Gary Mawyer

The paradox of garden blogging is that instead of writing,  one could be in the garden.  All spring we were racing the heat. The heat has arrived now and suddenly there is time again—it too hot at midday to do very much. Maybe one would still like to be out in the blistering sunlight anyway, because something is always going on. Bugs, birds, lizards, toads and the like are always up to something. Domestic plants have been bred to be fast-paced and fast-changing. Countless generations of breeding have made the common garden heirlooms we grow aggressive. The plants are bold. They lurch up from the ground and proceed to transact their agenda day by day. Of course many garden vegetables are annuals, and all annuals—vegetable, flower or weed—are plants on a mission.  They must get rooted, exploit all the resources they can commandeer, overwhelm the competition, bolt up and finally shake out the seed before their season ends, and in some way or on some level they appear to know it.

Photo by Gary Mawyer