August 12th, 2011 by Busy Mommy

Well, maybe not blood, but definitely sweat and a lot of it.  The backyard plants got started a little late this season- that’s because before I could even think about planting vegetable seeds I had to first make it not look like this:Or even before that:
A gradual procession of improvement:

First I built the veggie beds with redwood from the salvage yard which made it extremely cheap- I ended up using a handsaw for all of it because Nolan was still pretty little and I didn’t feel comfortable operating power tools like that with him under food- instant workout! There was also a lot of are to clear of VERY tall weeds and uneven ground that I had to even out.How to fit all those weeds into one green bin?  Hop in and stomp away of course!  In the end it took way more than just one green bin’s worth to haul away- but it still helped to compact it all as much as possible.  We ended up having to take at least one trailer-load to the dumps.For between the vegetable beds we found a tree company that lets you take their wood chips for free!  It’s fairly lightweight as well which was a good thing to start on for me and my first time shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and spreading cubic yards of material like this.  Nolan followed me around and we took breaks to have fun.after emptying woodchips into the back, Nolan got to have a ride back out to the driveway! Then in order to fill the vegetable beds we had some chicken manure compost delivered- 6 cubic yards worth- what was I thinking???  Do you know how much 6 cubic yards of material is? I moved every last ounce of those 6 cubic yards all by myself!  Do I sound proud?  Am I bragging?  You bet I am!  In a world where I’ve always let Ben take care of the yard and do all that stuff, I feel like I’m coming into my own learning how to do this stuff too.  I’m not sure if anyone else but me is going to think it’s “cool” that I was shoveling chicken manure though….taking a break to pose with my manure…..whew that was hard work.

After getting all the veggie beds built, hauling in the woodchips, filling the beds with manure and topsoil, it was time to paint those suckers- some salvaged wood has a nice “patina” that looks nice as is, but I just couldn’t see it on these pieces, so they all got 1 coat of grey primer and 2-3 coats of red paint- a Nana garden has to be colorful!  It just wouldn’t be a Nana garden if it wasn’t!


I actually just built a 4th bed two days ago which is the photo where you see me painting- the wood from the salvage yard for that 4th bed, which is 10.5′ long and 3.5′ wide, and about 15″ high, was $28.00- and I had leftover that could be used on another bed (if I had room!)- the other three beds are in full swing with growing plants.  As you can see we have corn (first time for us), a tomato, red cabbage (another first), cucumbers (both asian and regular), butternut squash (another first), lettuce, several varieties of carrots, and onions.The trellises for the butternut squash and cucumbers I built using some ideas I saw online and in the seed catalogs.  So far they’re working great.  I feel so satisfied to look out my bedroom and see all this growing now- the corn is so beautiful- as the corn silk get’s pollinated it’s covered in these beautiful pearlescent pink particles from the top of the stalk- it is so striking.Before it’s pollinated it has this beautiful sunny green-gold color.A baby butternut squash:Baby cucumber: