Guarding the Garden: A Little Restructuring

The garden is in for the most part!!! All I lack are a couple of purple bell pepper plants and my sunflowers.

This year I have had quite a bit of help from the hubby. Usually he just tills the ground for me and then the rest of the year it is all mine. All the planting, mulching, wedding, picking, preserving, cleaning out. All of it. That really is okay with me, after all, he does work a demanding job. Besides, I really like working the garden (unless it's 100 degrees). It brings a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. This year we did a bit of restructuring though, so his help was very much appreciated and needed. We moved the fence panels to make the gate opening at the shed instead of in the middle of the fence. This gave us a sturdier structure for a gate to actually be put on. Now that we have a large dog that is like a bull in a china closet outside (in the house he is very laid back) we felt that it was necessary. Then we decided to try landscape cloth as an underlayment for our sawdust/wood shavings mulch. This can be a one person job, but it is so much easier with two. (Though still a pain, I don't think I will do it again unless it works really well.) Then we decided to make paths down the long sides of the garden. We used landscape blocks that had previously been a retaining wall in the yard to make the borders. Then we filled the area with colored cypress mulch. This will make it easier to do raised beds next summer.

We got all of this finished just in time for the rainy and storm week that has been forecast. So, what did I plant? Not as many things as I normally do, but the usual things made it in there. Tomatoes , of course. Jeff picked those out. We have: Roma, Jet Star, and four heirloom varieties that include a black tomato and a yellow tomato. We have bell peppers (4 colors so far), jalapenos, habaneros, sweet banana, and Anaheim. I may put in some poblano as well. Purple carrots and multi color Swiss chard, broccoli, garlic, spaghetti and yellow squash, cantaloupe and one lonely eggplant round it out. I had thrown some spinach and lettuce seeds in with the strawberries a few weeks back. They are slow going, but have finally made there selves known.

Now it is just a wait an see game. We are all just hoping for a much nicer summer than the last one. With the very mild winter and a warmer than usual spring, we may be out of luck. I guess we'll find out soon enough.