Cabin Crafted

. . . well nearly. We only had light sprinkles yesterday and no rain in forecast today or tomorrow in spite of the earlier prediction. Hey we live in Virginia, if you don’t like the weather, stand there for 30 minutes and it will change. After the usual Saturday morning breakfast run and trip to the Farmer’s Market, where I purchased with my already harvested greens, 8 healthy Mini Head Lettuce plants. Yesterday afternoon, we bought two more Blueberry bushes, so after we arrived home, the garden clothes were pulled out, the bushes planted at the ends of the two rows of the other 6, the lettuce starts planted in one of the new boxes. and the tools brought out to finish the heavy work that was remaining. The box away from the garlic was dug in and built, filled nicely with the soil from the two boxes it replaced and some of the compost beside it. I didn’t want to leave the box that incorporates part of the garlic bed and below it undone. The cedar boxes are not truly 4 feet, so I dug outside of it and built 3/4 of the box around it. When the garlic is harvested, the 4th side will be added and the soil from that box added to the new larger, deeper one.

This is the box I cheated on. The new 8 foot sides end about halfway up the sides of the cedar box. I may add one more board on the near end and fill that box deeper. The other one built today is on the opposite side of the 4 x 4 box and the asparagus bed that still has fence on three sides of it.

From up the hill, you can see all the new boxes and all the old cedar boards that need to be removed. Two of the old cedar beds are stacked in the left corner, that is the compost area. Peas, onions, garlic, asparagus, and lettuce starts are in. The flat of spinach, kale, and mesclun mix are growing nicely and after the early week freezing rain that is expected, they will go in the garden as well. I will protect the new head lettuce plants with a translucent plastic box for early week’s freezing rain.

We bought a roll of weed mat as cardboard is not available and tomorrow, if I can bend after today’s efforts, I will finish putting it down and getting mulch on it. All that will be left to do is plant when the time is right, keep the weeds down in the beds themselves, all relatively easy tasks compared to what has been done. As I dug earthworms, they were added to the new beds that are bagged soil on cardboard to get them started in those beds. It has been a strenuous week that has seriously cut into spinning and knitting time, but the garden looks good, has boxes I can sit on the edges of, and is ready for the seeds and plants that will fill our freezer and larder shelves with goodness to enjoy. Since all the tomato plants that have been started are determinate plants, I may just stake them this year and build the A frame trellis next year. If I ever get the energy to move more wood, I may box the asparagus bed and build a new long box around the blueberries, though I think weed mat and mulch is all that is necessary there.

The peach tree, maple trees, and other fruit trees are beginning to bud out. I hope we don’t have a fruit killing freeze.

Today, according to the CDC, it is safe for me to be out in the world again, still with some precautions. Safe to give my fully vaccinated daughter a hug, safe to go in a store, still masked. We took off to Lowes and replaced the dishwasher that failed during the pandemic and arranged to have it delivered and installed in about a week. It will be nice to have that appliance again. Between the extra handwashing, dishwashing, and garden, my hands are a dry mess.

From Lowes we went by Daughter’s house, as she is working from home and her kiddos are getting virtual classes this year, and I got my hug and a conversation without a mask on. What a simple pleasure.

Another load of raised bed soil was purchased and because I didn’t want to rearrange the pile of heavy wood again, the 4 x 4 box that I failed to bring wood down for, was replaced with a commercial metal one. It is assembled, filled, the remaining bagged soil added to some of the other beds as amendment or fill soil to be topped off with more of the soil from the excavation of the upper 1/3 of the garden to dig in the two 4 x 8 beds when I can comfortably bend and tote, probably next week after the several days of rain showers pass. This evening, the onions and peas will be planted. I am considering adding a couple more blueberry bushes to the area where they planted because the box they are in has deteriorated and really isn’t needed as long as I keep the area mulched, so I can expand outward. That requires a trip to the nursery to see what they have. Lowes had some, but I prefer the ones from the nursery if they are in. The heavy joist board that I cut yesterday and left in the yard because I was just too tired to move them again were moved into the garden beside where they will be built. The rest of the scraps cleaned up and the tractor put away for now.

I’m pleased with the progress that has been made this week. I need more cardboard so I can finish mulching the bottom 2/3 of the garden. While I was working I did remove the straw mulch from the asparagus bed and got it weeded too. The photos, just don’t show how much slope this garden has. Once the remaining two boxes are dug in and built and the rest of the mulch laid, there will be a clean up of barrel staves and bands and rotting cedar boards from the old boxes. The new box looks so out of place with the rebuilt ones, but it is metal and won’t rot or rust.

Though we still have frost days ahead, I think the deep freeze days are past, so the fig was unwrapped. We will wait and see if it produces new leaves showing it survived the winter.

The rain showers in the forecast will provide me with a few days of rest from heavy garden work. Only one more day of it is ahead. I am pleased with the sprouts that are showing, more goodies to be planted in the gardens in the coming weeks and healthy food from our garden in the near future.

The little chicks are growing fast and going through their food and water quickly. The first batch are now more than 3 weeks old and getting feathers, trying out their wings. The 2 week old ones looks so much smaller as the older ones legs are stretching out like teenagers, no longer the cute few day old chicks.

It has been a productive day with some seed planting to be done after dinner, then a couple days rest before I finish the garden set up for the year.

After a sleep is optional night, I got up fairly early and decided to continue on the garden quest. As I lay in bed not sleeping last night, I decided to combine more of the boxes on the uphill end of the garden. They were rotting away, so this morning, I built a 4 x 4′ box in front of the asparagus but moved it downhill about a foot. I leveled the path below it and used that height as the grade for the box so lots of shoveling, but it did put some good composted soil in the 14′ bed I built yesterday, less will have to be purchased. The new box was set in place and filled with soil some from the paths beside it. The remaining 4 boxes up there are on either end of the asparagus bed and beside the one I built. They are going to become 4 x 8 foot boxes and will require a lot of digging in, but there is so much good soil there and where the compost pile was until the chickens spread it last fall, that there should be less needed for purchase. By the time I finished the box building and soil shoveling, it was time to fix lunch. Then I drove the tractor back up to the barn and hauled a 16′ double joist, two 8′ double joists, two 12′ 2 x 10s, and miscellaneous boards to use as ends for the boxes. The 16′ joist was cut in half, others trimmed to matching size or squaring off ends, and another long box was built, replacing a 4 x 8′ and a 4 x 4′ rotting cedar boxes.

I ran out of steam before I could build the next 4 x 8′ one on the upper end of the garden. It will require a lot of digging to level it and bring it down even with the smaller one I built this morning. The other 4 x 8′ one can’t be built until the garlic is harvested, but the wood is cut and will be stacked beside where it will be placed. Everything I did today is replacements. There is still a 4 x 4 that needs to be replaced, but I didn’t haul enough wood down to tackle it.

Several more bags of mulch were applied between the new boxes from yesterday and this morning. The garden is looking good.

Tomorrow will be 2 weeks since I got my second vaccine, so we are going to go dishwasher shopping. Maybe afterward, I will tackle the 4 x 8′ box that can be built now and Friday morning, before the rain showers begin, I will plant peas and onion in some of the newly finished beds.

I have lots of rotting cedar boards. The more sound ones will be used to build a compost bin in the corner of the garden near the hen coop. The rest will go in the burn barrel and burned when the spring burn ban is lifted.

For now, I’m going to just sit with me feet up for a while and redo my garden plan now it isn’t based on the old box sizes.