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Our New Garden Fence

Paul put up a new fence around our garden over the winter. This one is much sturdier than the previous fence and will surely not tip over or allow any deer inside. We also built several raised beds for the garden and installed cattle panel arches over which peas, beans, and squash can grow during the summer. Lastly, we are putting landscape cloth on the pathways and wood mulch to keep the weeds down. The wood mulch will cover the entire garden to help retain moisture and build the soil. As you can see, we're only partway done with the mulch. 

I've been recycling milk jugs to use as miniature greenhouses over young, tender garden plants. Green bean seedlings are growing under those jugs. Previously, earlier in the spring, the jugs helped my peas get established.


The garden is about 5,000 square feet, making it hard to get a good photo of the whole thing. There is still much to do.



Paul built two sets of gates, one at each end. The one below is mainly for if we need to get the tractor into the garden.


The side of the garden that is closer to the house has our winter/early spring veggies. About 500 cloves of garlic are planted here, as well as lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, kale, cilantro, parsley, catnip, and horseradish. The garlic is the only thing I planted here this year. The rest carried over from last year or reseeded itself.




Below is what happens when you tear out kale that flowered and seeded, throwing it on the ground. A billion tiny kale plants grow there. I also threw a few other plants into the pile last fall, including bok choy and lettuce, so a few of those baby plants are mixed in. Even though it's now growing in an awkward place, I'm letting it grow because...well, it's good food, right? No sense wasting it. Many meals worth of greens are growing there, and it takes little effort to grow. It would be harder to dig it out.


Below are our 500 cloves of garlic. These took a while to plant in tidy rows. Of course, kale is also growing amongst the garlic. I swear, kale is an invasive species.


I was so excited to see the horseradish emerge this spring. There it is, below. We harvested some late last fall, and I prepared it into a horseradish sauce. It was so good served alongside meat and potatoes. We even froze some of the raw, grated horseradish and enjoyed it for several months over the winter.


Below is what happens when your husband accidentally drives over a rosebush with the lawn mower. Never feel bad about running over a bush like that because you just bring some stems inside, put them in pots, and create rosebush clones. I cloned six additional rosebushes from that mowed-over one, planting them around the front yard. Unfortunately, the baby roses became food for the deer, so I decided to move the one below into the garden, where it will have a chance to grow bigger and give us some beautiful flowers someday. 


I love our little lettuce patch. We've had salad for dinner from the little patch below at least six times so far this spring. It reseeded itself from last year's lettuce plants.


I had a new idea this year for our tomato starts. As you can see from the plastic surrounding them, I've made a partial greenhouse for them, which I'll leave up until the late spring. This will help keep them a little warmer and prevent the wind from damaging them. We also put grass clippings around the perimeter to create some warmth. It's a little early to plant tomatoes outside in our area, but the plastic and the grass clippings will hopefully keep these young tomato plants alive while we wait for warmer weather.



There are about 20 more tomato plants growing in the front window of the house. I only planted the most root-bound ones outside for now. The rest can be planted outside later. 

There's our place from the end of the driveway. It's come a long way since we bought it six years ago.



This year's spring flowers by the door look so lovely. 


Hope you have a blessed spring. 

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