Garden update: Memorial Day (ish) planting

BEHOLD, my second garden bed! All the big plants are ones I got from the nursery, and the tiny barely-visible ones are similar plants that I attempted to grow from seed. Now I know, growing from seed is not easy 😅

People usually do a lot of planting on Memorial Day weekend, when the weather starts taking a turn for the better. I did all this about a week later, and then took until now to write about it.

Part 1: I'm forced to pay for things (gasp)

I had been putting off transplanting my veggies outside because that would mean I'd need to build the second garden bed and fill it with dirt. Though I was able to fill my first garden bed with free craigslist dirt, I only had enough leftover dirt to fill maybe 1/3 of a second bed. The clear solution was to suck it up and go to the nursery to buy stuff, but I held on for the longest time, hoping that:

    A) The compost I started only one season ago would magically finish decomposing and be ready for the garden (not possible lol), or

    B) one of my neighbors would order a truckload of compost and need help using it all.

Sadly, neither came to pass. There actually were a couple of truckload compost deliveries in my neighborhood, but all pretty far away, and they usually got snatched up quick. I live on the edge of town so most free stuff I see posted on town facebook groups are kind of far away. But boy did I look.

Another factor that pushed me to finally go to the nursery was that all my seedlings were pretty sad. I guess I didn't start them early enough, or maybe I didn't give them enough fertilizer, or maybe I needed to move them into bigger pots sooner... but most of them had stopped growing at some point and remained pretty tiny, with only a few true leaves. Meanwhile, my neighbors on facebook all had much more mature plants, with some even getting some early harvests. I don't feel that bad though, because growing from seed is not really a beginner move. And you can buy young, well-established vegetable plants from the nursery for a few bucks each.

And finally, after growing in my first raised bed for a while now, I realized that pure topsoil isn't exactly ideal growing medium. Dirt in our area is heavy in clay, which has poor drainage and aeration. All the good soil microbes need oxygen to survive, so having light and fluffy soil is essential. And drainage ensures that your plants don't get root rot after a heavy rain. I could tell my dirt wasn't up to par because garden soil is usually black and loamy. My dirt was light brown, and in the sun it baked itself into hard, compact clay, with cracks running over the top like chapped lips. Not great.

Ideally, your garden dirt should be half topsoil, half compost. Compost provides organic nutrients and lightens up the soil texture. We went to the nursery and got two bags of famous Coast of Maine compost for something like $8-10 each (this stuff sold like crazy when I worked at a nursery back in high school), and two bags of composted cow manure for something like $5-6 each because I started to get cheap. I got a cherry tomato plant, and two different varieties of regular tomatoes. One of them was a two-for-one, with two plants growing together in one pot! I got basil, because how can you have tomatoes without basil, and my basil seedlings were pretty pathetic too. And I got a cantaloupe plant at Isaac's urging, because cantaloupe is great. Finally, I got bio-tone (a fertilizer that helps jumpstart root growth for transplanted plants), and two tomato cages. (I had given up plans to DIY them myself. I've done enough I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing in my garden for now.)

I got some random stuff too: a terra cotta pot and coaster for my growing succulent at home, and a pink creeping thyme plant which I have since planted in a corner of the lawn with hopes that it will one day spread and replace all my boring grass. I spent $100 in total, (plus $30 for the zipcar), which I think was pretty good. I could have spent a lot more, trust me. (I thought the nursery was huge back when I visited in early March. In June, it's literally 4x the size because all the outdoor areas are now open.)

Part 2: Building the second garden bed (with free stuff!)

Time to build the bed! The first piece of furniture I picked up to refinish was an incredibly junky dresser that was leaning to one side. It was so junky I was happy to take it for practice, but also it was so junky it wasn't worth spending time on it for the amount of money I'd be able to sell it for. It's been sitting in my driveway for months, under the beating sun, pouring rain, and extreme Northeast weather mood swings. The good thing is, it's made of solid, hard wood. The drawers were dovetailed together, meaning the wood was cut so that it would fit together like puzzle pieces. With all the rain, temperature, and humidity changes, the wood had swollen and shrunk so much until finally the dovetails just popped out of each other. So the drawers literally broke themselves down into scrap wood all by themselves, which was actually awesome! (The frame has good wood as well, but is held together by thick nails bent at odd angles, and screws with stripped heads in hard-to-reach places.)

We had a week-long heatwave, so Isaac and I waited until sunset to get to work. We raced the darkening sky and an incoming thunderstorm and finished just in time. Like last time, I lined the bottom with cardboard to prevent the underlying grass from growing up into the bed, while still allowing excess water to drain through.

Isaac helped me nail the pieces together (because I still suck at using a hammer), and then we used our last remaining cinder blocks to hold the pieces up from the outside. The dirt holds them up from the inside. The back wall is made of old fence posts. 

Back in the first garden bed, I had already planted carrots and arugula in one half, and it was too late to disturb those. But I removed the topsoil from the other half, combined it with the leftover topsoil, and mixed it all together with the compost I bought. Then I used that mixture to fill in both beds. You can see in the picture below the nice, rich soil mix on the left compared to the sad-looking pure topsoil on the right. 

Part 3: We finally mowed the lawn, kind of

Our lawn exploded with those long wheat-looking weeds that grew to like 2-3 ft! We have a lawnmower left behind by the previous house owner, but I hate lawn mowers because they're loud, smelly, and scary. I delegated mowing the lawn to Isaac, and he said he'd do it "later." Mhmm. Our lawn looked so bad that when a friend saw it, he later said "So you guys are those neighbors." 

I learned that lawn mowers aren't all gas powered and thought about getting an electric one, but didn't want to spend the money. Then I found out that push mowers (completely un-powered!) are a thing. I was able to get one at a good price used on Facebook. But the weeds were so tall that the push mower was pretty ineffective. 

One month later Isaac finally got around to mowing the lawn. We didn't have gas or even a gas canister to hold gas if we went to buy some, so he used the dregs of whatever was left inside the lawn mower. He got in two and a half strips of gas before it sputtered out. Those two strips of grass look magnificent though. Wow, technology. 

I now have an abundance of grass clippings and a half-mowed yard. Some of the clippings stay on the lawn to break down and return nutrients, but the rest will be composted. (I plan to dry some out and use it as brown material, and use the regular clippings as green material, so that the balance of the compost doesn't get messed up.) I'm also using a little bit to mulch the garden beds. Mulching covers the soil around your plants to reduce weeds and also prevent the hot sun from evaporating away all the soil moisture.

Part 4: More updates!

Our tiger lilies are starting to bloom! I don't have a great picture because only a couple were open as of today, but soon it's probably going to be bursting. They've grown so thick and I definitely should have thinned them earlier in the season, but now it would be a ton of effort. Get back to me next year and I'll probably have some lilies to share.

I weeded the area next to our yard fence which was cultivated by the previous owner. I had left it alone for a long time because I couldn't tell what plants were weeds and which ones would eventually have nice flowers. I pulled out a TON of weeds, and found this cute little guy:

And we also have some late-blooming yellow daffodils now :)

The mystery shrub-like plant next to the water barrel turned out to be lavender, explaining its nice smell. (I didn't know that even the leaves of a lavender plant smelled nice!) I harvested some and will probably use it to make lavender syrup in the future, for cocktails and lavender lemonades 😋

I've been busy visiting friends/family and applying for jobs, and there was a heat wave that made working outside intolerable, so I haven't done much furniture work lately. But don't worry, I'm still very much enjoying the funemployment life :) Enjoy a cat picture, and some pictures from Maine and New York, both of which I visited recently.