Although our first crop of the year, the snap peas, went into the garden decrease returned in March (inside the snow), the majority of the spring planting runs from mid-April to mid-May. So, because of the truth that we were fortunate enough to have fairly fine climate in recent times, Brian and I both spent an great chew of the day outdoors, getting the lawn beds up and prepared for the season.
The first step have become to pull out all of the weeds, of which there have been many, from the beds. (As you will see quick, there had been moreover some extraordinary flora that we left in the back of.) Then Brian opened up the compost bin and dug out as a superb deal darkish, crumbly compost as he need to get?Approximately sufficient to refill our 4 5-gallon buckets twice each. As he stuffed the buckets, I hauled them proper down to the beds and dumped them out, and then we every got out shovels and rakes and implements of destruction to unfold the compost over the beds.
As we worked, however, we needed to take care not to disturb what changed into already within the beds. The simplest plant we've were given clearly transplanted to this point is the parsley, and of the peas we planted four weeks within the beyond, only a few tiny shoots have popped up above the ground so far. However, there appear to be some leftovers lingering from closing yr's garden that might be well worth keeping round. For instance, there's a small patch of scallions within the right the the front mattress, more or less in which we planted them final yr. Unfortunately, considering we strive to rotate all our flowers as an awful lot as possible, it is not wherein we intend to plant them this three hundred and sixty five days; it's far the spot we've got were given earmarked for marigolds (right next to the tomatoes, because having marigolds planted inside the equal mattress is meant to deter tomato-preying pests). Fortunately, the marigolds are not scheduled to transport within the floor for every other four weeks, which means that we're able to maintain the scallions around till then. A month from now, when it is time to expose their spot over to the marigolds, we are able to actually pull them up and devour them.
Another curious relic of last three hundred and sixty five days's garden is one lone Brussels sprout plant. As I cited in my Changing of the Garden put up remaining December, the Brussels sprouts we planted ultimate yr however had been now not massive sufficient to consume by the point wintry weather got here, so we simply left the plant life within the lawn to look if they'd live on the freeze. As it have become out, they did, and late closing January we controlled to reap a batch of little round globes, not an awful lot large round than 1 / 4, but sufficient to make one batch of our favourite roasted Brussels sprouts. After that, Brian chopped off what have become left of the stalk, and we figured that changed into the end of it. Except reputedly, it wasn't. As you may see right right here, the plant has grown a brand new head, Hydra-like, out of the lessen-off neck, and it appears to be developing what seems like some tiny flora of broccoli. (In fact, I initially idea this plant changed into without a doubt a relic of our unwell-fated broccolini crop, which did even worse than the Brussels sprouts, but Brian insisted it modified into the same plant he'd reduce the Brussels sprouts off in advance this yr.)
So we do not precisely understand how this plant survived or whether it'll ever yield something we will eat. But the advent of the little broccoli heads piqued Brian's curiosity, and he lobbied to head away it in the lawn and notice what occurs. Since we may not really want that spot till it's time to transplant the eggplants in early June, we absolutely have nothing to lose through way of making the check.
The identical can not be said, but, for the alternative plants we found in that identical mattress. The Winter Marvel lettuce we planted ultimate 12 months never virtually produced some thing before wintry weather came, and whilst there was no sign of it with the resource of the start of February, I figured there has been no component in attempting to plot this 12 months's garden round it. But seemingly my assumption grow to be untimely, because whilst Brian went out to weed the beds this weekend, he positioned that some of the flowers in that bed were unmistakably lettuces. This put us in a chunk of a predicament: lawn-fresh vegetables this early within the spring are continuously welcome, however the spot they had been growing in changed into supposed to be earmarked for the scallions, which have been due to be planted in recent times.
Fortunately, we have been able to decide out a manner to make room for the whole thing. The squares proper subsequent to the one the lettuces are occupying were special to preserve leeks?The handiest crop that did now not fare very well while we started them interior. We'd in the starting envisage to try to direct-seed a few leeks inside the garden on the same time we transplanted the seedlings and note if that might make up the difference, however Brian, figuring a lettuce within the hand turned into simply worth two leeks within the bush, made a gap choice to condense the to be had leek crop into certainly one square as an opportunity, leaving room for the lettuces to stay wherein they're. So we can see how large the ones get, and additional importantly, how they flavor, earlier than figuring out whether or not to plant more of them q4. Meanwhile, we additionally have been given our first square of spring lettuce planted (the trendy Bronze Mignonette range we determined to attempt in vicinity of closing three hundred and sixty five days's disappointing Blushed Butter Oaks), further to our first squares of arugula.
In the method of doing all this planting and stylish tidying up, we moreover observed pretty some issues with the lawn beds and paths that we're going to have to attend to a while this year. The most troubling is the circumstance of the beds and trellises themselves, which, after an fantastic seven to eight years of carrier, are now absolutely on their remaining legs. The beds, which we comprised of everyday, untreated -via-fours once more in 2008, are regularly staring to buckle or even rot away in places, and the trellises are leaning precariously far from their bases. For now, Brian has shored them up with some strategically positioned lengths of scrap wood, however it appears obvious that earlier than subsequent 12 months's vegetation move in, we're going to need to rip out the four complete mattress-and-trellis assemblies and rebuild them from scratch.
So the question is, what ought to we rebuild them with? If we go together with normal -via-fours once more, we are able to probably expect to copy the method another time some other seven or eight years down the road, so preferably we might like to apply a few component extra durable this time round. So a long way, I can consider three options:
- Cedar. More durable than the pine boards we're using now, but it's both pricey and hard to find. A quick search on Home Depot and Lowe's shows that neither one has any cedar two-by-fours in stock, and Home Depot says if it did have them, they'd cost $9 apiece for 8-foot boards. Since a single bed with a built-in trellis requires ten of them, that's a total of $360 for four beds—if we could even find that much cedar. Plus, it's not even clear that this cedar would hold up any better than the untreated pine we used last time; according to Woodweb, the cedar you buy in stores often includes some sapwood, which the author says can break down in as little as two years.
- Pressure-treated wood. I vetoed this option when we originally built the beds, because some of my gardening books claimed that the chemicals used in pressure-treated wood were highly toxic and should never be used near vegetables you intend to eat. However, since then I've done a bit more research, and it appears that the chemical they were particularly concerned about was chromium copper arsenate (CCA), which isn't commonly used anymore. According to the Oregon State University Extension, most pressure-treated wood these days uses other chemicals such as alkaline copper quaternary ammonium (ACQ), which is nontoxic. (Some copper can still leach out of the wood, but studies indicate it's not enough to hurt you.) At roughly $10 for a 16-foot board, this option would come to about $200 for all four beds. The one thing that's not clear is jut how long this stuff would actually hold up. According to Woodweb, treated wood lasts about 20 times as long as the untreated stuff—but The Natural Handyman claims that even pressure-treated wood really should be treated with a sealant every year to prevent warping and cracking, so I'm not sure which source to believe. I found one sawmill site that says pressure-treated wood in garden beds holds up for "20+ years," so it seems likely we shouldn't have to worry about replacing the beds again for that long, at least.
- Composite. A composite lumber made with recycled plastic, such as Trex, could conceivably hold up even better than the pressure-treated wood—possibly even well enough that we'd never have to replace it again. However, there are three problems with this idea: first, the design we used for these garden beds is based around two-by-fours, and most composite decking isn't sold in that size. Second, even if we could adapt our design to use thinner boards, we'd still pay something along the lines of $500 for a package of ten 16-foot boards, or $1,000 for all four beds. Given that the stuff is only guaranteed for 25 years, that's a pretty crummy value compared to the treated wood. And finally, Brian has said he's not really comfortable with the idea of using anything in our garden that "won't break down eventually." (Actually, the 25-year warranty suggests that this stuff will actually start to break down after a few decades, but it won't break down into anything natural.)
And, while we're at it, we'll probably have to do some work on the paths as well. As you can see from these pictures, the paths we laid in 2013, using garden cloth and stone dust left over from our patio project, just aren't managing to keep out the weeds. In addition to worming their way up around the edges of the cloth, both around the periphery of the beds and around the edges of the fence, they're now poking their way up straight through the cloth and stone dust right in mid-path. So if we really want to get the weed situation under control, I'm assuming we'll have to have another batch of stone dust delivered, yank as many weeds as we can, and then put another thick layer of stone dust over top of what's already there—possibly with an additional layer of garden cloth underneath, as well, to put as many barriers between the weeds and our feet as possible.
A final problem we discovered, while working on all this garden stuff, is that we appear to have an unwanted tenant in our shed—most likely a rat, to judge by its abundant droppings. So at some point, we'll either have to press our rat trap back into service (and hope it works better, or at least causes less collateral damage, in an enclosed area), or find some other way to evict the critter before it can pose a threat to our emerging crops. (I wonder whether there's any way we could recruit the local feral cat population to help us with this job. Could they possibly be bribed with milk?)
