It's March, In Like a Lamb

The weather has been very mild so far this March.  We have been out in the yard working all weekend.  My hubby had a three day weekend and spent the whole thing out in the yard helping me build my last three raised beds and getting the chicken coup started.  I can't believe how much we have gotten done.

 Here are my hubby and Uncle Kevin working on the last of the raised beds.  They were doing that while I finished up the cinder blocks. 

Here is number five put in and level before we filled it with dirt.

I took this picture standing in the front yard right next to the first raised bed this morning.  You can see that we now have seven and they are all full of dirt.  That was my goal.  I am so excited.

Here they are from the other end.  You can see the last one in the back is raised up.  We decided to put in a step up to the back yard with cinder blocks.  The yard sloped pretty steeply towards the front and as we leveled the spaces for the beds we were having to move more and more dirt.  We made the back yard a whole step up from the side yard.  We still have to raise the tops of the window wells and fill the dirt back in against the house to make the yard really level and not sloped towards the house. We decided to wait until the temps are more concrete pouring friendly.

 

 

Here I am almost done with the tedious chore of putting in the cinder blocks all level and in line.  They aren't perfect, so no making fun, but I worked hard on that.

 

I lifted each of those blocks in and out at least five times.  My hands and arms are tired.

I planted some peas on March 1st.  They like cold temperatures, I planted one wide row along the edge of this bed.  two weeks later I will plant another second row and put in a climbing fence between them.  I love fresh peas.

I also put in some garlic and onion sets.  I hope the garlic gets frozen enough to set heads of garlic.  It got down to 28 degrees last night. I should have planted it last fall, but I didn't have enough space ready.  These packages of sets were really funny.  The instructions were written as if you were planting flower bulbs, and not vegetables.  I got a kick out of it.  I think some new gardeners will get screwed up by that, but luckily I have grown onions and garlic before.

 

We made some major progress where the chicken coup is concerned.  We are putting in a beefy foundation to help keep out digging predators and scavengers. Here you can see the cinder block foundation layer. Over these we will lay some sturdy hardware cloth and..

 

these flat blocks.  That will give a good three to four inches of depth to hold in the sand I plan on putting in for the hens to scratch and dust in.  That way we can just sift out the poop like a litter box and it will drain and stay dry and smell free.

The location we chose for the coup was also where the birch tree was until we cut it down last year.  These are all the roots we had to chop and dig up to make room for the foundation.  That was a chore, let me tell you.  My hubby helped so much with that.  We used a reciprocating saw, a hatchet and a heavy splitter, not to mention shovels, to get all these out.

We ended up buying a prefab coup kit at Coastal Farm and Ranch.  I began to really doubt my ability to get the coup built in time this year before I have to go back to work on April 1st and this kit was actually less expensive than the lumber I was planning to buy.  The only things I am not crazy about are: it is shorter, and therefore you can't just walk into it and it isn't quite as sturdy as my plans were.  The frame is 1 by 2's instead of 2 by 4's.  It does, however, have a nesting box that you can just reach into through the hinged lid and separate doors for the coup part and the run part.  It is close to the same floor space size as my designs were. It also has a little door on the end for adding a larger run on. This is a picture of the model one they had set up in the store.

 

Here is the latest picture of our house from the street.

You may have noticed that there is a curious blue sprinkling on the lawn area.

 

We decided to try seeding our lawn in.  My hubby has been put on watering duty.  Even though it is march, it is very dry. I think we had rain one night so far and yesterday we had some good wind to dry it out. 

We got the seeds with the water absorbent coating to help them stay moist.  You can't really tell but we did lightly work the seeds in with a rake. The ones you can see are probably about half the seeds we put down.  I hope they do well.  I have not noticed any birds checking them out.  The coating must help with that, too.

If you look very close here, you can see two very small miniature irises poking through the bark mulch.

The dutch irises are really coming strong everywhere.  I am so excited about them.  I have not seen any tulips peeking out yet.  I hope they do.  They are very pretty ones.

 

Well, plans for this week include buying our chicks on Wednesday.  They will be kept in a brooder in the house until they get their feathers, so we have a while to get the coup finished.  Also, my mother ordered seeds for both or us from our favorite local seed company: Irish Eyes in Ellensburg.  We should be getting those soon.  I want to start the tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages indoors soon. We have a couple south facing windows that should work well for that.

 

We ordered potatoes, scarlet runner beans, our favorite carrots, and bunches of other seeds.  I also ordered some cranberry beans from another company.  I got those last week.  I have wanted to try growing those for a while.

 

Have a great first week of March.  I will post pictures of the new chicks when we get them.  I can't wait.



February's Not Too Early for Yard Work, Right?

The weather this week, was just screaming at me to come out and work in the yard.  I was a bit sceptical about how much we could really do yet, but I decided to give it a go.  We live in USDA hardiness zone 4 so we are months away from our frost date, and in some shady places there is still snow on the ground.

I was very excited to see the dutch irises poking through.  Grow, little guys, grow!

 

I call this our glacier.  It is our last remnant of snow in our yard.

Our boxwood are still alive after late planting in the fall.  They are showing some yellowing. I will fertilize them when it warms up a little more.

The pear tree has buds on it that look pretty nice.  It isn't time for looking for blossom buds yet.

 

 This is our house from the front now.  The boxwood are small, but you can see them. We have finally moved all of the extra dirt from the front  lawn area, and are ready to plant.  We are debating what to do.  Should we buy seed? If so, what kind? Should be get sod? If so, where should we buy it? I like the new water saver blends with micro clovers and other herbs in them.  Of course, the hubby does not.  We will see what happens.

 

Here you can see the two new raised beds we added this week.  Yay! My plan has three more.  I think we will get them done before planting time.  I am very optimistic.

I leveled off enough room for at least the next two.  We just need to buy more lumber.  Next payday....

Last year I didn't really garden at all except in these containers.  I grew some tomatoes, an eggplant, loads of basil, dill and a few onions, carrots and nasturtiums.  My mother also brought me loads of strawberry starts from the old homestead, they are in the process of selling.  I was glad to have them, but wasn't quite ready, so I tucked them in these pots here and there.  I didn't get many berriesfrom them, but they multiplied themselves very well, so when I plant them this spring in a raised bed I will have plenty.

 

If you remember from my earlier posts, this part of the yard (pretty much the whole back yard) was very overgrown and piled with old logs, sticks and mulch from when we had the trees cut down.  I have cleaned it up a lot this week.  Really, take my word for it.  This is so much better than it was.

My hubby cleaned up this side of the house before the winter to keep the basement window sills from getting wet and degrading even more. We will need to replace them eventually, but it is not high on our list.  I envision a bit of a rock garden on this side of the house.  It never gets any direct sun, and is already pretty well covered in rocks.  I want to plant some decorative moss clumps, shade tolerant grasses and maybe have a small experimental shade garden to try some crops.  I am thinking like a 2 foot by 3 foot area at most.

We still have this ginormous pile of rocks that we don't know what to do with, but after two truck loads of stuff hauled away it is looking much nicer.  My aunt and uncle have given us this little Chevy S10 to haul things around in.  It was my grandfathers until he died and my aunt inherited it.  We all love it.  It has spent most of its last ten years parked, though, so it has some issues, but for just taking our seldom trips to the lumber store and the dump, it is perfect.  We bought a new battery a side mirror and a steering wheel cover for it. That's all it took to get it going, really.  It sure beats having to borrow a truck from my parents who live 20 minutes away. 

 

This is the former home of the terrible black berry bush.  It was very determined to stay, but I was more determined it should go.  I think I won in the end, but it proved to be a formidable foe. Hopefully, none of its children have survived to try to avenge their mother. I feel like I am the heroine of an epic tale that might have a sequel

This is the future site of the chicken coup.  I have bought the foundation blocks for it.  I just need to level it off and start work, but I feel like I should get the whole yard back there level first to really see what it will look like.  I would hate to get it wrong and have to move it.  My husband and I are debating what to do about this ugly wood shed.  Obviously, we can do a lot to make it look better by taking down the random wafer board and crooked two by fours, but should we just rip the whole think down? About the only part that is not ramshackle thrown together is the roof, but even the supports  for that are questionable.  The closest corner you can see in the above picture fell victim to one of the digging dogs that lived here before we bought the place.  It was dug up and then severely chewed upon.  It is no longer lending much structural support.  I am leaning towards taking the whole thing down, straitening out the garage by jacking it up on this corner, then building a new wood shed. I have been looking up simple plans.  I guess the real problem will be trying to get that all done before we need to start storing wood for next winter. we do use the wood stove a lot in the winter for heat.

 

Our neighbors are constantly stopping and giving us praise and encouragement while we work.  They are very nice. I think they are glad to see this yard getting better.  I am sorry it has taken us this long to really get things done.  Last spring we had too many projects going on inside the house, and we were exhausted from moving and tapped out financially.  We definitely didn't get as much done in the yard as we would have liked last year.  This year will be much better.  I am trying to get as much done as possible before I go back to work.  I am kind of hoping I get part time hours like I did last year so I have more time for my garden.  Even with the raised beds we have so far I will have loads of vegetables to tend to.

This concrete square is where we are going to build our grape arbour.  There will be just enough room under there for our picnic table and we have room on the outside to plant grapes and/or hops to make it cool and pretty for outdoor parties in the summer.  I am still researching what varieties of grapes do well in our area and which kinds taste good as table grapes vs. juice grapes.  I think I will plant hops along the road side this year because they grow faster.  I can dig them out when the grapes get established.

There was a huge Oregon grape plant along this corner of the house.  The tree service we hired cut it down and chipped it and hauled it away, but little pieces of it were up close to the foundation so they couldn't get at them with the stump grinder.  With all these rocks it makes it very hard to get them with the shovel now as well.  I think we may have to get out some strong herbicide this summer and kill them off that way.

My new boots I bought last year are finally getting broken in.  I am getting very used to them.  At first the heels were a bit awkward to me, never having worn boots with heels, but now I love them.  They feel great even after a whole day of digging with a shovel.  I recommend getting a good pair of boots to anyone who works outside.  It is worth the investment.

 

Have a great day. Hopefully, weather permitting, we will make enough progress to have another update in a week or so.

 

P.S. My mom and I went together and ordered our vegetable seeds last week. I am starting to plan how we will start the tomatoes and peppers indoors when they arrive.