I think we can go ahead and declare SPRING down here, with high temps in the mid-70s (80 on Friday!), and nights in the mid-40s. And we are READY in the backyard, I tell you.
Here’s where we started last year, with four lovely planting boxes.
That’s a new vermicomposter there under the window, a (sob!) dead key lime tree there on the right by the screen door (January frost was too much for it), and all the other assorted paraphernalia required to run a micro-micro-micro-micro farm. The mini-pitchfork there has become one of the most useful tools we’ve ever purchased. From turning the compost pile to loosening soil, just get you one of these.
On the fence to the left of the patio are five brand new shelves installed by Husband, to hold our massive collection of tiny pots with seeds and cuttings in their various stages of propagation.
And a wider view…
…encompassing the large patio boxes put in last fall, the bottle tree, the air-layered trident maple (we expect to get at least four good-sized trees from this), the sprouting celery, snow peas, and the transplanted peppers. Seriously, buy a pitchfork!
2×6 boxes have been put in around the interior perimeter of the fence, to hold melons, and later, beans.
We put the poor, kitty-harassed fig tree in the ground there as well, though now we must worry about birds stealing the fruit, I suppose. The cucumbers will also live out there, at least until the rainy season, when the sap-sucking whiteflies appear. The beans we grew last year, with their big broad leaves, seemed impervious to a great many pests, including whiteflies and shield bugs, so they’ll be planted for the rainy season of June through September.
The climbing rose has been tamed, espaliered even…
…and should make a beatiful frame for the boxes thereunder. We also hope it has better luck than we do standing off the weeds that encroach from the other side of the fence.
The boxes extend down to the Don Juan climbing rose next to the composter, and include a dedicated corn box (it is west-most so as not to shade anything else), and a tree nursery box, where little trees go to get fat and branchy. The herb boxes to the left were put in last fall and continue to produce mighty swaths of fragrant greenery. Which reminds me, I have horehound drops to make!
So, we’re all set for some serious growing this year, thanks to Husband’s excellent carpentry work. All that remains to do is cosmetic…rock border around all the planting boxes and mulch in between. Goodbye, tax refund!