Garden saga, part 1

Inspired by this book, we decided to build a raised bed garden this year. Christopher worked hard building the garden plus a little bit extra and we ended up with a nice 4x12 bed. He also built a small 2x4 bed for some friends to put in some herbs.

While looking around for some soil - we wanted a mix of good compost and top soil - we came to the problem of how do we (with a fairly small car) haul well over 1,000 lbs of dirt back to our house. The big bags of soil are usually about 40 lbs and we'd need like 30. That just seemed like a lot of work and one could argue that a pregnant lady shouldn't lift that much (although the dr recently told me that I don't have a lifting "restriction" at this time in my pregnancy). In addition, buying compost in bags can be fairly expensive. So I found a local company that sells a compost and top soil mix especially for vegetable gardens. The price seemed reasonable and they delivered.

The two week wait seemed super long when I wanted to put our plants in the ground.  But the "soil guy" delivered our black gold yesterday and Christopher then hauled the dirt from our parking space to the garden using a 5 gallon bucket. Who needs a wheel barrow??

We had started some herbs and a couple of veggies from scratch:

Our helpers while planting. The red dog is our little friend, Lucy.

Progress!

I had planned our garden on paper but, unfortunately, the wait meant more time for me to dream about what else we could do and I bought a couple more plants and seeds that didn't really have a home.

Around this time I wondered if everything would fit. It didn't.

So yesterday the plan was altered slightly and I still have to go out and create a map of what actually went in. Who plants things is rows? Not this girl! We'll see how that works out. Oh, and those are strawberries on the side!

We are going to see if some herbs will come back as perennials with some love and mulch over our cold winter. (There wasn't really room in the garden for them anyway.) Most of the smaller plot is barley seeds for beer.

 Speaking of beer, Christopher's hops are racing up their poles. We will eventually run string from the front porch down to the poles and the hops should go up it. Hops don't produce much the first year but he should get plenty next year for all his brewing needs.

 It looks like today will be a nice day and there are still a few things to do. I have several herbs in small containers that need to find a home and I'm going to prep some soil in the front to plant carrots, beets, garlic and maybe lettuce, all from seed.