I want to say I’m done, but I’m not.

We went out and bought a dozen more bags of mulch. I wrestled some stubborn grass clumps that had come up over and through the weed fabric, laid more where needed, put down the last of the cardboard in the narrow paths, and started spreading the mulch. I had hardly begun when a light cold drizzle began. It wasn’t supposed to start raining until tonight. I worked on through until I had the gate side, the narrow paths, the south end, and the blueberry bed mulched and realized that there were only two more bags, not enough to do the chicken run side and the rain was getting more persistent, so I quit.

These are before and after pictures of the entire garden before this week’s work.

This was last year after I tried to reinforce the thin cedar boxes, dug out the mint bed where the white bag is laying and put down hay as mulch. Seeing the tomatoes planted in the upper right box and the comfrey up beside it, it was later in the season.

Here it is after the week’s work, taken from the opposite end. The plastic over the young greens is about where the mint bed was dug out for perspective. The large box to the left of the barrels is where there is no box in the upper photo’s top right. I tried to grow corn there last year unsuccessfully. The boxes are sturdier, the mulch is shredded wood mulch over cardboard or weed fabric. The two remaining bags of mulch awaiting some sunshine or at least no rain to finish the last bit on the right side. You can see two of the old boxes that didn’t crumble when I pulled them up, leaning against the fence. They along with 4 more you can’t see in the upper right corner are going to be taken apart and the boards used to create a two bin compost pile up in that corner and that area will be mulched only with hay. It has been a lot of work, but I am hopeful that it will reduce work in the long run and will produce better harvest in some areas that did not grow well.