Growing Supper

I've decided to try and grow a vegetable garden this year, since I have space for the first time. Now every morning my first thought after waking up is 'I wonder how the plants are doing.' Last night I even dreamt about the garden. Or the yard at least. There was lettuce, spinach, and rainbow swiss chard popping up all over the lawn where I hadn't planted it... If only it were that easy!

Now, I've never done this before... so who knows, I could just end up killing everything and getting stuck with an empty patch of dirt where the grass and Creeping Charlie once thrived. I did manage to kill a cactus once. But you have to start somewhere, right?

So here's the yard pre-roto tiller:

The long weekend in May was the first time we really had a chance to spend a good chunk of time outside. It's hard work, this gardening thing! After two days spent out in the sun hauling pieces of turf to the back of the yard and bending over to dig holes in the dirt for planting, my back was killing me! And oh, the sunburn! By the end of the holiday Monday, we were happy to just sit on the back porch, sangria in hand, surveying our work while it rained.

My first successful pitcher of sangria was a last minute throw-together. I know you're supposed to let it sit, but I hadn't had the idea in time for that. Maybe it was just the exhaustion tainting my perception, but I was pretty happy with it:

1/4 cup triple sec

1/4 cup gin

the couple shots of vodka we had left

1/2 cup of orange juice

1/2 freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

1 bottle of red wine

frozen blueberries instead of ice cubes

But before that was all of this:

Once we started digging up the garden area, we quickly became aware of the fact that our backyard is pretty much pure clay. It's so thick that I thought maybe we should just build a kiln instead and become potters since we've got an ample supply of the stuff under the grass.

So, off we went to The Glasshouse to pick up some peat moss and sheep manure to try and fix the situation.

We added six bags of manure and 3.8 cubic metres of peat moss to our garden and roto tilled the whole thing again. Here's the garden area after we finished:

On top of the vegetables, we thought we'd try and grow some flowers beside the deck.... so far it's just dirt. But soon there will be wildflowers and echinacea growing... Well, I hope there will be!

There was a small pile of bricks beside our front porch when we moved in here last October, so we relocated them to the back to use as stepping stones. I made a teepee for the climbing beans in the centre out of bamboo poles from the dollar store. You can see the few plants I got in the ground before it started to pour. From left to right there's Butternut Squash, English Cucumber, Tomato, Scarlett Runner and Golden Wax beans around the teepee, and more Tomato. In front is the garlic I started last fall.

Still lots more plants to put in the ground yet though...