I certainly don’t spend my mornings or afternoons watching soaps….does anybody really watch those anymore? But the days are getting warmer as the earth continues to turn into the warm days of spring for us in the northern hemisphere and with that the expanse of our garden is growing and we have plenty of places to plant vegetables yet I am still brewing up ideas of what space will expand next because it still seems as if we aren’t growing as much as we should to sustain our family for any period of time. Let me tell you though, if you were to have seen our yard 4 months as compared to today you would understand why we are so happy to have what we do have because at this time last year it was much less.

The last of the blackberry roots have been dug out although I’m sure we will have to attack a few spirited sprouts every now and again. The nasturtium seeds that the kids and all their neighbor friends sowed are now sprouting, in large, thick clumps. I considered splitting them while young and spreading them around a bit more but that is low on the priority list right now, at least until I get the rest of the veggie starts planted which is just some tomatoes, a couple hot peppers and some mystery plants. All of the leaves that we had delivered in the fall have become a good composting mulch and it all has a home in the yard now. This fall I will double our drop because I could surely use some more!

The cinderblocks that were around the original garden bed are now gone, mostly. A few remain because we don’t have any material to fill in the gap that will be left behind and cause erosion. I am so excited about this though because I always thought they were the biggest eyesore and they honestly did not serve a very good purpose in the form they were being used. It was difficult to get grassy weeds out and weeds and blackberries would even grow up inside of the little cutouts that are in cinderblocks.  Here is what the bed used to look  like (this was our only gardening space) and what we have now. Removing the cinderblocks and adding leaf mulch will increase our gardening space, soften the edges of garden making it more visually appealing and as I mentioned above, weeding will be so much more efficient with them gone. Notice the blackberries in the back of the yard in the photo on the left. That was just a few months worth of growth since they had been hacked back the previous fall so the area was a bit larger when we tackled it. It is difficult to see in the current photo what has been done in the area that was once a blackberry patch but I will get a better picture soon. For now I can tell you that we have a plum tree planted back there along with some summer veggies and perennials that I divided or being grown from seed.

The cinderblocks have been repurposed into a wall that disguises our compost/clutter area and I planted a marionberry in front of it which will likely outgrow it’s place there but it’s close to one of the raspberry patches so it seemed like a good spot. Marionberries aren’t super vigorous though so it won’t be too hard to keep cut back. Speaking of berries, I added another 8 plants for a total of 48 raspberry plants! We won’t see a very big crop this year since half of those were planted this year and we have yet to see if some of the plants make it but I am hopeful and so excited that the kids will be able to forage in the yard.

With inspiration from some friends we brought in some straw bales to give straw bale gardening a try. I let them sit out in the rain for a week and then I dug a small hole out of the straw and spread some compost on the top then planted some of my veggie starts. then I put the straw that I pulled out back around the plant. I fit 3 pepper plants into one bale and put 2 summer squash plants into one bale. The biggest reason we opted for straw bales this year is because the garden bed that we sheet mulched last fall just doesn’t seem ready; the ground is full of clay and the soil is very compact.  Often times a garden bed takes years to really be prime for gardening so we aren’t rushing it and I figure that having the composted straw bales with compost getting mulched into the bed will only help the soil composition. I am still planting some tomatoes directly into the bed because they seem to be doing well. We also have some mystery sprouts growing from the compost that was put into the bed. I think they are a summer squash that we grew last year, Ronde Nice, although I hope they are pumpkins otherwise our neighbors will be full of squash too!

Once I get these veggies in I don’t think I will be doing much more planting and I don’t have any major projects planned and I prefer to sip ice tea in the shade when it gets hot out. My goal is to keep the weeds from creeping back into the space that we have mulched and I will also be learning how to increase the soil composition of our garden area and we’ve got cold frames that need to be ready for the fall. Plus I would like to figure out a way to build the kids a cool fort on the cheap. Any ideas?? Oh, and we needed to get the clothesline put back up last week! Work, work, work!

I look at our backyard and I remember that we rent the house we live in. I look at our backyard and I see an expanse of grass. I look at our yard and I see work that needs to be done. I look at our yard and I see a paradise. A place we can call home and envelop ourselves in a bit of nature right outside our door. We have many reasons not to improve the land we live on but we have many more reasons to make it better than it is.

My thoughts are constantly stirring with new ideas and garden plans of how the next section of yard might look. Yes, we are fortunate to have a flat city lot where we can do just about anything when compared to a sloping lot but sloping lots are gems of another category but we aren’t covering that right now. Having a few small areas and sights like these keep me motivated to continue building our own paradise.

Today was a gorgeous day and Eugene, Oregon finally got a break from the rain. The soil was a bit more wet than I would have liked but we went ahead and turned over the compost that is creating our newest garden bed and the soil under it. It still needs a little more working and settling so we covered it with tarps since more rain is on the way. In retrospect, we would have been smart to have covered the area much earlier in the season and we would have seen the organic matter compost much more quickly with controlled moisture.

While we were working on this garden bed project, a great friend and helper stopped by the house and took all three of our children to the park! How amazing is that?? Sammy and I worked head-to-head moving down the 4×20 foot bed as we relished over the awesome earthworms and black dirt that we were going to be gardening in. The turning of this bed went much faster than we had anticipated. Renting a rototiller would not have been money well spent plus we would have killed so many great worms. (Some people actually try to grow worms, you know…)

Amazingly enough the sun continued to shine on us and we moved on to the blackberry eradication project. I had bought Sammy some leather gloves with the hopes that the project might be a little less painful. They did prove to help because he was able to grip the vines but finally he realized the usefulness of a metal garden rake and started using it to his advantage. We still have some digging of roots to do and then we will be moving as much leaf compost into the area as possible. I am so excited because this is all happening much sooner than I expected.

At the advice of a good friend and fellow gardener, I reluctantly plucked the blossoms from my newly planted 1 gallon size blueberry plants. Doing this is suppose help the plant get larger during the growing season rather than working on producing a handful of berries. I tossed the blueberry blossoms at the chicks to eat because I thought they must be packed with all kinds of energy and nutrients….probably should have ate them myself. The raspberries that were planted last year have some blossoms on them also but I left those on since they are such vigorous growers but I did have some weeds to pull from their growing area.

In the vegetable garden I planted some more radish and lettuce seeds since it has been about 2 weeks since I planted the last set. We now have 4 different varieties of lettuce growing, so long as the buttercrunch and romaine sprout. Speaking of sprouting seeds, we have some sunflowers that are peeking up out of the ground. We even had a couple of frosts over the last 4 or 5 days so I was a bit surprised to see them. I meant to put a little bit of leaf cover over them today but forgot to. If these puppies make it we are going to have some great looking sunflowers!  Looking forward to sharing some photos as things keep moving along.

I’m somewhat sad that it has been nearly 6 months since my last post. I am hopeful that this will change in the future as we gear up for more cold season gardening by using cold frames and though we may not have been prepared for year-round gardening this year, this is the first year I have had a garden in before April because this was also the first year (post-children) that I was able to weed the entire garden and get it fully planted as a solo deal. This is proof that my children are growing into new stages and phases and this gives me hope for the future. I even made a large trellis from some bamboo that we picked up off of Craigslist for free and shortly after constructing the trellis we had a rainstorm with high winds come through (and it still hasn’t left) and the trellis still stands firmly! Snap peas are now beginning to climb it.

I have been lusting after the idea of turning the rich leaf compost (partially visible in the foreground of the photo) into the soil where we are developing a new garden bed that will almost double our current vegetable gardening space. But with all the rain the soil is too soggy…and I wait patiently, daydreaming of the rich soil and what the space might look like with a cold frame over it.

If a cold frame over one of our vegetable rows doesn’t materialize I won’t be disappointed because we do have some wood/glass pane cold frame boxes in the works. These boxes will probably go into an area where we are clearing out some blackberries (notice the blackberries in the upper right of the photo? They are covering the entire back corner of the yard) and plan to let the chickens roam and scratch up the soil to kill off the roots. Hopefully time will grace us and these blackberries will be a thing of the past come October.

For now we are growing:

Snap peas
Brocolli
Cauliflower
Swiss Chard
Radishes
2 varieties of Lettuce
Cilantro
bunching onions

I also broke the rules and planted some seeds outdoors that would not tolerate a frost (melons, sunflowers and morning glory’s). Maybe this is what brought on this cold rain storm…But I feel confident that we will have some survivors that will take the lead on growing and give us a welcome harvest of goodies and beauties.

The other seeds that we have started for our summer crop are growing in a sun room at a friends house. We don’t have good southern exposure from anywhere indoors so we hauled a rack and our seeds down the road to a place where they could thrive. I just love how seeds want to grow. Some are so tiny and dry and almost seem void of life yet they burst with life when given just a fraction of care. Growing food is so simple and rewarding, if you aren’t doing it right now what is stopping you? And if you are growing your own food think about the possibility of growing even more.

I didn’t have a chance to update our Lawn to Food Journey for the month of August but we did get some things done since our original post. I planted two blueberry plants in the box we had set out in July. I also realized that using paper bags under the leaves wasn’t good enough. It did keep the weeds down some but not like I wanted it too….next time we will opt for cardboard even if it means a bit more work and time.  Of course we continued to harvest fresh veggies from the garden. I was amazed at how many bell peppers we were able to get and eggs with tomatoes and pesto were a breakfast staple along with fresh cut salsa.

The raspberries that we planted are doing great. They have tons of new growth on them and some are even producing flowers for berries. An Indian Summer and some bees would do us good.

I realized how inefficiently I used some of the garden space we had so I do have better plans for next year. I’ve cleared out most of the summer vegetables to make room for a fall crop which includes: brocolli, brussel sprouts, chard, red cabbage, radish and a variety of lettuce.

Find out what worked well and what didn’t in our Eugene, Oregon garden.