It’s a new year for the garden. Thank you for sticking with me through a really crappy last year. We’ll start with the newly planted garden, then get into more details.
This is the great news. Here’s what we started with this year. I called it “cover crops”, and it did serve that purpose. In reality, this was random stuff that grew after we pulled all of the plants last summer.
As you can see, things were looking rough. In good news, the rosemary, thyme, and mint all survived the fall/winter of neglect. Nothing else here was intentional. I’ll digress for a moment. Skip next paragraph if you want to avoid mention of cancer.
I mentioned an illness last year, but the reality is that I am fighting renal cancer. I had major surgery last February, but was on my way to recovery when we planted last May. Then the liver biopsy happened and severed two arteries which truly knocked me out for the summer. This ended garden care and things went south. We did the best we could and did harvest some tomatoes and peppers, but nothing like we normally would have. Now – that all said – I am recovering and moving forward. I’m on oral chemo and things are progressing really well! It does impact my energy level though, so getting all of the garden in was a major accomplishment for me.
OK – on to more garden stuff. We cleaned out all of the beds, filled them up with vermiculite, peat moss, and compost – ready for planting. This had to be done over several days in the early morning or just before dusk when the weather was in the 60s. While working, we stumbled across our new garden assistant. Super friendly and not scared of people at all!
Now, we’ve got most of the plants in and are looking forward to eating yummy food this year. One more quick item….. see how the bottom bed on the left is empty? That’s because there was a huge fire ant mound there. Yikes! I went to my friend Google for a solution and found something that’s working! A mix of borax, maple syrup and water in a small to go container lid is working wonders. It completely eradicated the ants on the upper level and is doing a good job of getting them out of the bottom level. One more treatment should do it. I’ll go in and plant there when they’re gone. Whew! Read about this on Ants.com.
So, that’s the update – you’re all caught up! Still to do – another, new layer of weed fabric to make things look pretty. Stay tuned!
