Garden Shed Update

It seems like any time we decide to take on a project, we think it's going to be easy. With the garden shed, easy-peasy right? Make a foundation of stone and gravel, level, put up shed. Done.

Hahahahahahaha.

First, we selected a location and got digging, as seen in my last post. Cary started digging a bit more and hit a weird spot of gravel. Then we realized that the electrical boxes are just to the left of the shed location. Ooops. We are those idiots that didn't "call before you dig".

Sure enough, electrical lines are running right under our desired location. Time to select a new location (also, so much for lines being 3 feet down, no we didn't break anything)...

Never have I missed our old house and its large yard more. With our current house and our smaller yard, the choices for a shed were limited. We ended up selecting a spot on the southern fence. This cuts off our access to a gate quite a bit and we had to remove a starwberry planter. :-( On the flip side, this particular gate is broken, so what are we losing?

Honestly, I'm not in love with the location, but I'm determined to make it work. Cary has been working hard, nearly every free minute he has been working on the foundation and has made A LOT of progress.

Now it just needs to be finished off, move tons of sprinkler stuff, and build the shed.

Easy-peasy right?

Comments

My Little Review of Smart Gardener

My good friend introduced me to Smart Gardener via Pinterest . The description was something along the lines of, "this site plans your garden for you." As a new gardener, I was skeptical. Sounds a little too good to be true, but I checked it out anyways. At first I was enamored. It allows for garden planning in 4 steps: 1. Layout your garden - you are able to choose the square footage of an in-ground garden, or choose from a variety of containers/raised beds. Cool! 2. Select your plants - this is limited by season, and you cannot mix cool weather and warm weather vegetables. Not cool! Varieties of vegetables are also limited if you are looking for something specific, but you can add them manually. 3. View your plan - you get a little image with your selected plants on it, plus the space they require in your garden (square footage), planting depths, seed spacing, plant dimensions, and what to plant next to each other or not (F...

"New" Tomato Cages

One day (in 2014) I stumbled upon a post in the LA Times about tomato cages (article from 2012). There seems to be a lot of theories out there about how to grow tomatoes (up, on the ground, upside down?), and I knew our homemade cages last year where just painfully too short for how large those plants became. I really liked this cage configuration from the Times - it seemed simple enough and cost friendly enough. I initially checked out some of the basic cages at the nursery and were surprised how expensive they were. I went to Home Depot and was able to find fun colored ones for roughly $6 each. My wonderful mom purchased 10 for me, paired by color. They are nice enough that they can be reused year from year, and they stack well - not taking up too much room in an already too full garage. I was able to buy a pack of 6 bamboo poles for $3. So 5 permanent cages for $35-40. Perfect. Setting up the cages was relatively painl...

So Year 2 Happened, I Swear

It's been almost a year since my last post and oh what a year it was. Pregnancy kicked my butt, I remember planting my lettuce seeds sometime last May, looking at the fluffy dirt and just laying down. I know if I were living thousands of years ago, I would be dead. Easily. So while we planted the garden, the garden did not receive the love and attention of Year 1. Here's a little recap of the season: We planted very similarly to the previous year (tomatoes, zucchini, onions, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, lettuce). We tried to plant squashes on the hill, but right after they sprouted, they were mysteriously gone. Either rabbit or dogs, not sure which. Next year will require a more thorough defense plan. Tomatoes: They did better than last year, and I was excited about harvest time (kinda, chopping up tomatoes in a lot of work), but a tragic hail storm hit. And well, this happened: Zucchini: They did fine. We end...

Project Garden Noob - Year 6

Search This Blog