First off... we have to say kudos Richard & Sandy to coming out here to help us with our garden.They came to visit us last week from Oregon and spent their whole vacation working on our yard. While they were here we: shopped for new veggies & flowers, moved plants around, transplanted trees around (the ugly ones from in front of the garage), and planted a gazillion Dahlias. Wow, who knew that planting Dahlias would be so complex. I'm sure glad I waited to have Sandy show me how.
Sitting at the kitchen table each day, Sandy spent alot of time with us, trying to pass along some of her gardening know-how. There was so much to learn, I had to take copious notes.
When Rich wasn't busy digging up plants, he was busy installing a new doggie door for Coco. (She just loves it!) He also, met with the local building inspector to help us plan out our new deck. Don't know how much of the deck is going to get done this year, but at the very least, we now know what we can and can't do, so we can go ahead with our design.
I just wish my inlaws lived around the corner, instead two states away!!! Of course, they did sneak in some house hunting... so maybe they will be living around the corner in the not too distant future. Yippee.
Okay... here's the update on the back garden.
VEGGIES
Well, we got a little delayed with our gardening plans this year, due to Devon's back surgery. (While I was down in Phoenix in April, poor Devon herniated a disk and by time I got home he needed to have back surgey.)
So while all this was going on... our plans to rent a rotortiller became impossible. The kids and I did our best to "till" the soil, using rakes and shovels. We thought we were going to die! Once we completed that job, we needed to even out the two gardens, by transferring a ton of dirt from the flower garden to the veggie garden. This was an incredible challenge as we no longer had a wheelbarrow (we either gave it away, or had no room for it in the moving truck) and had to throw piles of dirt on cardbox boxes and haul it across the yard. Man oh man, that was tough.
Anyway, I have sketched out our planting layout for the veggie garden. So far, I think that everything we planted for the veggies has come up.Sandy taught us about "companion gardening", and learned that tomatoes and green peppers should NOT be planted together. So, we had to transplant all the peppers, which are now in pots behind the back of the house.
Richard and Sandy began to have concerns about the amount of sunlight hitting the garden. It looks like maybe the flowers and veggies should actually be reversed. Of special concern is the lack of sun that our tomatoes are getting. So, as an experiment, we went out and bought a few more tomato plants and planted them behind the house (where our future deck with go). We are going to see if the sun is any better there.
FLOWERS
Here is the layout of the flower garden. I don't think that it is doing as well as the veggie portion. Right now, I can't tell the weeds from the flowers! I'm so pathetic. This puts me in an ackward position, because I don't know what should be pulled out and what should stay.
Devon is thinking that if we wait another week or two, it will be obvious. I hope he's right.
Additional note: I decided to tackle the weeding on Monday. I came up with a plan of looking up each and every plant in my Western Garden book and getting an idea of what the plant should look like. So with this in mind, David and I set out to getting out all the weeds. After two hours of work, we discovered that we had more weeds than flowers.
FLOWER GARDEN --- BEFORE WEEDING
FLOWER GARDEN --- AFTER WEEDING
(I think we're going to have to go out and buy some flowers!!!)
