Garden Beds

It is that time of year again. Time to prep garden beds to receive seeds in the next few weeks. In fact we are quite behind this year because we have been down with the flu, and we will be gone on vacation in early March so we may not be able to catch up enough, but we will do our best.

Bak choi, swiss chard and tomatoes have sprouted! The tomatoes and peppers are going to be inside for a good long time, but the others are going to need an outside home sooner or later.

Yeah, we got over the flu, but everyone was still wiped out, especially Winnie-Win. the flu is hard on the littles.

But she was back in action after a quick nap. The first step is to put cardboard down on the pathways as a biodegradable weed barrier.

Then moving wood chips, one wheelbarrow load at a time, to bury the barrier.

She may be tired and not feeling good, but that’s not going to stop her getting work done.

When we ran out of cardboard we pulled out the last roll of contractor’s paper. This is a relatively cheap and convenient solution, about 13-16 dollars for a 167 foot roll.

Not quite enough to complete the row, so a short section towards the end of the pathway will have no weed barrier.

Alas, we will have a few weeds to pull by hand. As always.

Especially the bindweed (convolvulus). I hate that stuff.

It takes a lot of wood chips to cover a 7o’ x 3′ pathway. It takes 8 times as many wood chips to cover 8 such pathways. You may wonder whether all of this is worth it.

Yes it is. Without a strong weed barrier, the pathways become havens for grass and bindweed growing into the rows, they are muddy in the winter and spring, and dry and dusty in the summer. Never underestimate the importance of being able to get a wheelbarrow in between your rows. This is almost one of the most important gardening lessons I have learned (trust me, I did not learn it easily).

Winnie had trouble pushing her full wheelbarrow across the mulch, so she enlisted Evie to help. The other two tagged along because.

Evie is a good big sister, she let Winnie dump the wheelbarrow by herself, but she takes no responsibility for where those wood chips end up.

She can pull that wheelbarrow out of there all by herself.

Seppi dug himself a fighting nice warm bed in the wood chips.

Ellie is not as satisfactory a helper as Evie is. “No! Don’t dump there. Not there!” We had to put the fallen woodchips back in the wheelbarrow, and wheel it around to the correct pathway before Winnie would be happy with dumping it.

Then the mail lady dropped off our new raspberries.

We inherited some red raspberries with the farm, but one of the rows was pretty dried up and over grown. Hardly any raspberry canes grew there.

So we mulched it heavily last fall, and then ordered some new raspberries. These are all primocane varieties, meaning they only have to be pruned once per year, after they are finished fruiting, and will fruit in early summer and later, potentially, late summer from the canes that sprouted that spring. Hopefully they will be easier to prune and maintain than the floricane variety we already have.

Planting is one of our favorite activities. All the kids love it, especially when it is this easy.

And there we go, a fresh new row of raspberries.