More Work In The Garden

I was excited to get home from work this past Friday and work some more on our garden.  Our backyard has been a mess for some time and short of hitting it with the weed eater a couple of times each summer we haven't done much back there.  And is showed.  I've really struggled with our backyard over the years trying to make it nice.  This year I'm determined.

Bareroot strawberries I planted on Friday

With all of the runs on food at the grocery store I decided to add another garden bed area so we'd have more planting space.  A couple weeks ago I used wood I already had on hand to build it, then I lined the bottom with a layer of cardboard from boxes I had.  Then on Friday I added a nice thick layer of our compost.  Now I need to come up with some soil to top that off.

That is a big pile of weeds and crap

I pulled a HUGE pile of weeds out of our backyard.  The wild geranium had seriously taken over and I hate those things.  They grow super long fibrous roots and if you don't get it all pulled out then they just keep popping up.  

Look at the roots on those things!

I spent a good portion of Friday evening and Saturday morning pulling those dang things up.

I pulled up all the pavers

About twenty years ago I'd set up a paver walkway complete with a bed of sand underneath and gravel all around.  Over the years that had fallen into neglect and looked atrocious.  I've tried to salvage it in the past few years, but this time I decided to dig it all up.  It made it much easier to dig up the wild geranium that way too.

After the pavers were removed

I moved the wood pile and cleaned up the old flowerbed that hasn't had flowers in it in ages.  I also decided to pull up the plastic lawn edging that kept it separate of the walking path.  I'm hoping to plant some things along the fence this year, probably pumpkins and squash.

I was able to burn up quite a bit of old wood

We had a bad storm on Wednesday and the lawn was a total mess after all that work the week before.  I got it cleaned up however, and used our firepot to burn up the sticks and twigs that had blown from the trees as well as some of the wood in the pile I had moved.  I need to burn a lot of that up as it is beginning to rot.  I also plan to spread the ashes on the walkways around the garden beds in an effort to thwart the weeds.  The I want to cover it all with mulch.

Before

Lastly, I pruned our fruit trees and cut some of the apple limbs up to give to a friend for his smoker.  My daughter collected some of the sticks for her bunny to chew on too.  And we used some more of the sticks to replace a few missing grids on the ramp up into the chicken coop.

After!

It was A LOT of work, but boy it sure felt good once I was done.  I still have a lot more to do but I am making progress and it is starting to look pretty good out there.  I'll just keep plucking away at it a little bit at a time.  Eventually I'll get it all done.