So What's New in the Garden?

Well here in Minnesota it has stopped snowing!  We have all been out in the garden trying to catch things up outside.  Today though it is a rainy day, time to catch things up on inside.  Which means taking a moment to blog about what going on in the garden.

Despite the name "Serial Tiller Pat" I've left behind my best friend for raised beds. Above is my little red machine, my super duper cool Troy-Bilt Super BroncoRear Tine Tiller!  This lady in red does some serious work!   It is kind sad because she hasn't been in the garden this year but is in the garage collect dust not dirt.  Doesn't it look like she is pouting there in the corner.  I'll be sad to see her go, but she off to my brother place with 10 acres of un-touched land just waiting to be tilled for vegetable and flower gardens.  I know going to a good home.

This year is the year of my raised beds.  I've spent most of the winter planing and changing plans enlarging plans and scaling back just a bit after my husband see them.  He has put in for me six raised beds using 3"X4'X8' Cherry Stained Landscape Timbers we got at Menards for $2.19 a piece.  Each bed is 3' Wide X 8' Long and 11 1/2 " tall.  First he laid the beds out, then he told me what would and wouldn't work.  As he is always telling me I'm the engineer he's the guy that makes it work.  First he laid it all out in the yard, then he started building each individual bed.  After some debate, I convinced him that yes the sod needed t be removed.   Now he wasn't happy about this hence you can't see his face, but up came the sod.  He also didn't think the bed needed to be level, after a lengthy debate, the beds are level too.

Once the base of the bed was level we put down hardware fabric to keep the moles out, and then cardboard

on top of that and then landscape fabric on top of the cardboard.  We then put 1/2 of the frame that we had nailed together in place.  Once that was he had added the next two layers of landscaping timbers I had him line it with that Professional Landscape Fabric.  This is the stuff they tell you to put under walkways and patios not gardens.  It doesn't really breath but here my goal was to prevent the Landscape Timbers from leaching into my soil.  I was told it was perfectly safe, I just wasn't entirely sold on what they were telling me.  So we put in this added protection.  To the right is the first finished bed.  Jim could knock out about 2 of these in four to six hours depending on the help he was getting and the engineering discussion we had.  We then went to Lynde Greenhouse and Nursery on 9293 Pineview Lane North in Maple Grove and purchased compost.   For $15 they will put two bobcat scoops in the back of your pick up or trailer.  We used a trailer an then backed the trailer into the back yard, less wheel barrel work that way.  Now we could have gone to the city compost and shoveled into the trailer for free, but I thought having them load the trailer for $15 was well worth the price.  It took us four loads to fill all the beds so $60.

We then went to Fleet Farm and bought Hog Panels, I had one way I wanted my squash arch to go up and Jim had different way.  We did it Jim's way, it looks nice but I'm thinking we may have a problem with it if we get a big storm and it's full of squash but we will see.  Right now, I have a side by side comparison of before the project started (It is the dreaming photo with snow falling) and to now other photos I took today as we are almost finished!  I have some more planting to do (let's hope it stops raining).  Jim is bring home 8 straw bales that I will use on the ends of the outside beds to do some more tomato plants.  Right now with the straw bales the whole project has cost $412 not including plants.  My budget was to do it all for less than $500.  That means Jim's got $88 to go fishing this weekend.  :)

Dreaming 

Looking good!