After a detour in our summer plans, I decided that we should reclaim our untended raised beds and plant a vegetable and herb garden.
Pivoting is what we are doing with our plans this summer. Not long after we returned home from Camp Sequanota, Mr. Katie had a perforated appendix and had to have emergency surgery. I had a little time in the evenings while he was in the hospital and that is how I churned out the previous two posts. He came home on July 4th and has been adjusting back into normal life.
Currently he has a wound VAC and is working partially from home. He has limitations with movement right now because he is healing. We have put some of the camping adventures we had planned on hold for now. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have other adventures.
In the meantime, I decided that we should lean into raised bed gardening. Raised bed gardening is something that I wanted to get into this year. We build raised beds and gardened one season, in 2017. Then we sort of forgot about it for a while. I took steps to reclaim our garden earlier this spring. We haven’t gardened since the fall of 2017.
In order to reclaim our beds, about two months ago, I covered the beds with black plastic to kill all the weeds that were growing with unabated. However, it wasn’t until our summer trajectory changed that I concocted a plan for how we would clear the beds and what we would plant.
Last weekend I cleared the beds. I ended up needing to dig up several woody treelike plants growing in the beds. It was a lot of sweaty work on days where there was a reported heat advisory.
Then look at the pictures after I cleared the beds. I had to dig up at least four woody trees while I was clearing the beds.
Earlier this week I purchased seeds for Brussel sprouts, carrots, peas, kale and some herbs. I also purchased tomato plants and hot pepper plants. We are currently in the process of planting everything.
I am looking forward to including the entire family in this project. The boys like watering the garden so far and Mr. Man helped me put some the seeds into the ground. Mr. Katie and I made a map of where everything is and will be planted. Mr. Katie, being the precision person in our household, has helped me figure out the exact right location of where the seeds should go. (If left to my own devices, I would just dig one big hole and drop all the seeds into it at the same time).
I am pretty excited about this new project and I hope that we soon see some of the fruits of our labor.
It feels like our very own science project.
I am very proud of you, Katie. Clearing out your beds was hard work! When I get back home from Alaska, I will have to come visit and see your progress. Keep up the good work!
Thank you Aunt Jeanne!
Good job, Katie!
Thank you Jenny!
We have a woody tree growing under our trampoline. I haven’t managed to completely dig it out as every few months it’s long arms are back. It makes me feel like Reba McEntire in Tremors. That was a lot of hard, hot work. I look forward to seeing pictures of the crops you grow.
Thank you Annie