Seven Ten Clark

There is no rest for the weary. Or is it wicked? Maybe it’s both, and maybe we’re both, and there has definitely been no rest for us lately. The yard is really coming together, and it’s really exciting. We’re actually getting comments from neighbors about how much work we’ve done to the house, and about how pretty soon we might be invited to be included in the neighborhood Garden Walk, and we’re both a little sheepish (but all the more dedicated to improving our plot). Kevin’s vision for the overall design of the garden in back is really coming together, and it’s exciting and exhausting to watch and work on it. More update pictures of the backyard will be posted later, but for now let’s take a look at the seedlings!

Here's the coldframe that Kevin built to act as a greenhouse for the seedlings to get them ready to plant.

And here are the seedlings themselves! I'm a proud seed mama.

They're getting so big! Almost ready to go in the ground!

We’re going to have a pretty giant garden this year, including a very large plot dedicated almost entirely to herbs. My oregano and mint from my little herb plot last year actually (surprisingly) came back this year, which is a little magical to me. Nature amazes me.

What are you planting this year?

Dudes, I’m so sore after this past weekend. But we got so much done! Inspired by a recent Flickr set showcasing a potager (kitchen garden), Kevin drew up plans for the backyard that involved tilling most of it to be used as a garden area, having a fountain/”water feature” (what a cheesy phrase) as a central, visually appealing piece, and having gravel paths around the whole thing. Yay for getting rid of lawn to mow! So, since our friend Craig let us borrow his tiller, and since compost isn’t quite done cooking at the dump, this weekend we got to work laying everything out and doing prep work for our garden-to-come.

Here you can see the dual vegetable garden areas on either side of the sidewalk leading down to the garage/alley. We have effectively more than doubled our plot from last year.

Here's Kevin laying down the landscaping fabric between one of the veggie garden plots and the area where I'll have my herb garden (it will be epic). Landscaping fabric is awesome, and Menards just happened to have it on sale this weekend.

One of the trails laid with landscaping fabric, and lined with Purington Pavers, historic bricks and the same kind that several streets in Iowa City are paved with.

The first batch of gravel has been spread. It'll take one or two more loads to get the coverage we want, although I don't think we can finish the gravel paths until the fountain pond thing is completed.

This is not a firepit! It's a planter that looks like a firepit, and which will be dismantled and replaced with (hopefully) one of those whiskey half-cask planters, if I can find one that isn't $40.

Next post: Revenge of the Seedlings!

We’ve started planning our vegetable/herb/flower garden for this year, and we’ve already made some progress on getting better at the whole process. Last year, we basically just dug up a pretty large plot in our yard and filled it with plants that we bought from Menards and Lowe’s. We had a particularly wet growing season, and ended up with a moderately bad case of blight in our tomato section. NPR says that blight was widespread last year, both because of the excessive rain and because so many people purchased their plants from the big box stores, which allowed a ton of diseased plants to be spread all across the country.

We weren’t going to be so naive this year, so we ended up ordering heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Seed Company, a business specializing in heirloom seeds out of Missouri. We definitely wanted to go heirloom, since we’re not into Frankenfoods and we like doing things the old-fashioned way.

We ended up ordering a metric ton of seeds (after teasing our friend JoAnn about the amount she wanted, we ordered at least 25% MORE than she did), and last weekend we embarked on the process of sprouting the little bastards. We had no idea what we were doing, but we went to Menards and bought a bunch of setups for growing seedlings, including peat pellets and little biodegradable pots, and we got to work winging it. It’s less than a full week later, and as you can see, we’ve already got growth!

Too bad Mother Nature is taunting our progress.

Sad face.