Friday, April 8, 2011

Spring Fever

We finally have some sun in Seattle.  Last year we had to wait until June for sunshine.  I swear I was a few weeks away from hanging myself.  This nice weather is giving me a serious case of Spring Fever!  Even with a pile of serious work to do I'm compelled to dig in the garden... that and buying a $4 head of lettuce.  Seriously should lettuce cost $4 per head?!  It was organic, but still, that's ridiculous.

Back yard
We just moved into a new house a few months ago.  At our old home I had a small, fairly well established garden that provided us with a decent amount of veggies during the summer.  This new place is a blank slate, but it's a good canvas... there's not a lot of stuff I have to remove and it's flat.  I just have to build the beds and till the soil.  I feel like I'm racing against time to build my beds, everyday I wait to plant is a good growing day wasted.

Laying it out
This is the sunniest part of the yard by our boxwood hedge.  It's close to house and the water supply.
I have no idea what I'm doing.  I found a bundle of 2x4's by the side of the house and decided to sketch out some bed designs.  I like sketching on paper, but this gives me a much better visual.  All in all I'm going to start with 4-5 beds.  I think this will grow WAY MORE than 2 people can ever eat.  I only had 1.5 beds in the old house.  This will give me room to do root veggies, onions, garlic, broccoli and cabbages.  I can also set aside some space for a winter garden.  When we had the smaller space I stuck to high output crops like spinach, lettuce, tomatoes and beans. 

Overhead
An overhead shot from the kitchen window.  You can see 3.5 beds laid out here.  I've made them 8'wide by 4'deep with a 20"-24' footpath in between.  I'm planning out what I need for materials today and hopefully I can get this built next week.

3 comments:

Betty said...

Can't wait to see what you are growing! I am waiting for the last bit of nasty weather to go away before planting anything else. Have fun with your garden!

Bozena Wojtaszek said...

I looved your previous small garden so I'm sure the new one will be a blast too :)

Diem Chau said...

Thanks Betty. The rain is delaying my progress. pointless to dig while it's wet : /

Thanks Bozena :) I was very comfortable with the small garden. This seems quite overwhelming. I'm trying to break it down into small projects.