Our garden! Sadly, because of the possibility of a freeze (WTF South Dakota, it's the middle of May) we didn't get the plants moved into it. But we did have a wonderful (and wonderfully free) Sunday to construct our new addition. And it's a good thing we had the whole day free, because it was quite the process. I even remembered to take pictures along the way, so you can witness all our hard work yourself!
We started by constructing the bed in our driveway. After much debate and examining the wood possibilities at the store, we settled on a 6' x 6' garden. Of course, once we got the boards set together I felt like the whole thing looked a little small, but we decided just to go with it and add on later if we want /need to (and of course, decide if we are even successful enough gardeners to justify having a larger garden).
I took this picture right after we had set the first round of screws in the boards (which was a way longer process than it needed to be because the drill wasn't fully charged), and our next step was to flip the whole frame so we could get the second round of screws in. So we picked it up to flip it over...and the whole thing fell apart. Someone (I won't name names) didn't get long enough screws, and told me (even after I expressed concern) that they would work just fine. Well, they clearly didn't--they went through the first piece of wood just far enough to get one or two threads into the second piece, but it wasn't enough to hold them together. The phrase "I told you so" may have made an appearance. So we left the entire mess in our driveway and headed to the hardware store. Which worked out well for me, because I came home with these bad boys:
I love me some cute gardening gloves! And these are super awesome too, because they are nice and fitted, which means it's almost like not wearing gloves at all. They were more expensive then the "one size fits all" gloves with the fat fingers and stiff canvas/leather, but soooo worth it. I totally wore them the whole way home from the store (don't judge).
Anyway. We removed all the too-short screws and started actually getting the boards put together. Because the drill wasn't fully charged and would run out of "oomph" after a short while, Darrell had to manually tighten a few screws. Which was fine... until he decided to put a screw through a knot in the wood.
Maybe I should be impressed by how strong he is? Needless to say, we had no way of removing the partial screw, and it was too short to bend over or otherwise eliminate the hard, jagged edge, so the executive decision was made that this would be the side that got buried. A few screws and a trench later, it was.
Let me tell you, I wish we had plotted off the garden area before we started planting grass seed. Digging that trench and breaking up the grass/dirt inside the plot was a Pain. In. The. Rear. Those grass roots have some serious holding power, and clay-y soil certainly doesn't help. But, we prevailed, and packed in some of the bigger chunks around the side to hold the frame in there securely. We then added some good topsoil, plus some special "garden" dirt that supposedly has special nutrients and stuff in it. As novice gardeners, we figured our plants would need all the help they could get. Next, Darrell began putting up the stakes that we needed to attach the fence to (darn rabbits making us buy extra supplies to keep our garden safe).
I got a little bored while he was doing that since it was a one-person job, so I started randomly digging up weeds (which we have plenty of in our yard). Well, let me be the first to tell you that I. Hate. Dandelions. Their roots go on FOREVER, and it's pretty much impossible to completely get them out, which means they'll just Keep. Coming. Back. (Can you tell how exasperated that makes me?) So I was going to town on this massive dandelion bunch, and was determined to get the entire thing pulled up (at the cost of putting a massive hole in our yard, but whatever), when this happened:
Apparently Darrell isn't the only strong one in the family. And apparently cheap garden tools are a bad idea when you have soil that is predominately clay after the first few inches. You may have won this time dandelion, but I'll be back. And better prepared.
And that's all the farther we got! We still need to get some zip ties because we need to attach the fence to the top of the posts (the little U-shaped nails Darrell got for that project weren't working so hot on the thin stake; he couldn't get enough pressure behind the hammer to pound them in without snapping the stake in two), and then I've made him promise to cut the extra height off the stakes (why we needed four-foot stakes for a two-foot fence is beyond me). And then, of course, we plant! After tonight, any risk of a freeze should be a thing of the past (at least it better be!), so hopefully we'll get the plants in by the end of the week. Which definitely needs to happen because some of them are seriously growing out of their little containers. I'll have to remember to take a picture of them before we transplant because it's kind of ridiculous how big some of them are for the size of the containers. Of course, they'll probably look super tiny once they get into the garden, but at least we'll be one step closer to having our own vegetables!
No comments:
Post a Comment