LAST YEAR
Last year I was determined to have a garden. We had just moved here a few months before and it was the first time we had not been living in an apartment for a long time.
There is a fairly large yard on the side of the house. When we moved in the previous owners told us they had a garden roughly in the middle I’d that side yard. We had a friend come over to use his machine to plow the garden area. I had marked out an area for him to work and we took it from there.
The big problem while I was amending the soil and planning the rows - glass and other debris. It was right about then that I figured part of that yard had been used as a burn pit over the years. It made it hard to work and dig because I was always worried about cutting my hand on the broken glass.
Although I was nervous I did continue adding bags of compost and soil to plant in. I also added a fertilizer just broadcasting it over the garden area.
Some things did well. Roma tomatoes we had bought from an Amish greenhouse. Also, the cukes and zucchini I had planted myself. Some things didn’t do well. Like my Hungarian wax peppers and the regular green peppers. My carrots never came in, nor did the radishes. Other things were so-so and came in spoty. On the other hand the potatoes did very well. The picture at the front of this post shows part of the harvest.
THIS YEAR
Unfortunately my project to renovate the master bedroom was started around January. It entailed finishing ripping up the old carpet, plastering some damage to walls and ceiling, then repainting them. We also installed a plank floor over the old floor. Due to all this work I was delayed starting a garden this year.
I had been hoping to take steps to amend the garden. During autumn of last year I had placed a layer of leaves on the garden. I thought it might provide some nutrients to the garden.
During the summer of this year our neighbors’ landlord was having the tree in front of their house taken down. I asked the tree guys if I could have the load of wood chips in their truck and they said they had another tree to take down in the neighborhood and would be back with a full truck load of chips.
I planned to spread the chips over the garden and a week or so later they showed up to dump it. I laid out a tarp and estimated the load was fifteen by fifteen by four feet.
I have a small wagon that had a dump feature. I used that to move the chips into the garden. I used a metal rake to pull the chips off the pile and then a snow shovel to load the wagon. In the garden I used a plastic rake to smooth it out. It was many, many trips over several days. I had also put cardboard down before the chips to help kill the weeds.
Although I did leave gaps in the between the cardboard (by accident) and that allowed some weeds to poke up through the gaps and the wood chips. As the leaves fall off the trees I will also be putting them on top of the garden to break down. In the end I covered the whole garden. It took several trips over the couple of months to finally spread out all that I needed to on the garden area. I had some leftover to use to restart the compost pile. At the time of this writing I am waiting for the leaves to drop and I will add them to the garden.
