The Veggie Garden Is In! (Almost)

It was crunch time this last weekend and we made it a sprint by getting our vegetable garden in, well at least most of it.

We brought in some dirt to even out the surface of where we chose to put the garden. The front yard is much larger than our back yard, and the only flat surface in the backyard would have been over our septic drainfield which is a total no-go for planting. So, up front the garden went. This is also a great sunny space with a bit of dappled shade for the hot summer afternoons.

I became ‘one’ with the posthole digger over the course of the two days and my upper body really felt it.

Chris was the engineer in this, planning out where to put the beds and putting them together.

The second load of dirt we got must have had a nice mix of clay in it that we didn’t notice when it was dry, but we were working several days after a good rain and it was a muddy mess. Once we get some sod in that should clean things up.

Chris’ dad and step-mom were in town over the weekend. His dad was the photographer and both of them pulled up chairs to watch as we built the beds.

Done! Kind of.

But done enough to haul in some good dirt to fill two beds and get tomatoes planted! The tomatoes needed to be in probably two weeks ago but such is life and we’ll just have to go with it.

I ended up buying two larger plants from our local nursery, German Johnson and Mariana’s Peace, to get a bit of a head start and have some tomatoes perhaps by early to mid-May. I remember last year our peak harvest was coming in mid-May and rolling through early June, tapering out by the end of June.

I think I have enough dirt left for one more bed which I’ll work on later this evening. If I can fill the bed or at least half of it I’ll plant potatoes. Then we’ll have to order another load of dirt which we’ll use for the other three beds and eventually for the perimeter bed that will be for growing vining vegetables and herbs. And sometime we’ll have to get a fence up, but first Chris is going to install plumbing for a watering system.