I’m really good at starting projects, and never finishing them. I have about 6 different house projects going on right now – from painting, to furniture assembly, to organizing closets. I suppose my track record for keeping a blog is right in line with past history. Those kids in my last post – they’re 5 years older now. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve posted an update here. Oops.
But, the garden – now, that’s a project that I’m not going to give up. And with any luck, this blog will resurface in 2021 as I work to build a new garden, in a new home.
I bought a new hose in June of 2020. Yes, I moved right in the middle of a pandemic – but that’s a story for another blog. Unfortunately the timing didn’t allowed me to grow much but house plants these past 9 months. Those are growing nicely, though, with great southwest exposure:
My new home is in the same city, on the same Great Anoka County Sand Plain – so in terms of weather and season length, not much will be changing with VEGarden. The back yard is full of ash trees, mostly at the end of their life cycle. So last fall I had a few trees taken down, and will slowly work on the rest. I have plans to replace them; this is a decade-long process that I’ll share as it happens.
But – the garden. I decided to put in raised beds, and ordered a fair number of them to kick off my first year growing vegetables at the new house. As the temperatures are just now starting to warm, I’ve just started building the beds. Here’s where we are at today:
After quite a bit of research, I settled on galvanized steel raised beds. These are about 18″ tall, and after reading all the reviews I ordered a fair number to get the garden going. I have three “Fresca” units from metalgardenbeds.com (one is put together in the first photo above), and two EarthMark Alto Series beds from Home Depot (this is the one that R is standing in).
Over the next few weeks I’ll be gently loosening the ground below the beds and laying down cardboard and a thin layer of wood chips (plus many wood chips in the garden paths, around the beds). I’ll need to order garden soil to fill.
My goal for this year is to take a lot of pictures, and get back into the groove of regularly updating this website. There will be a bit of pixie dust over the next week or so, as I bring the software up to date. And I’ve got thoughts… on garden beds, on LED grow lights, on cutting down trees, on finding sprinkler heads, and on vegetable varieties. I hope not to disappear for 5 more years, but… no promises. 😉
Until later…
