It’s hard to imagine that spring would suddenly be here in full force after such a long, cold winter, but we have had some absolutely incredible weather the last couple weeks. Highs in the 60’s (15-18°F) and plenty of sunshine. So I decided to get outside and slowly start getting things ready for the growing season here. The almanacs and forecasts are still predicting some pretty cold nights ahead, so going full force with planting isn’t in the cards yet…but we have a lot of ideas and things we need to work on before we start seeds anyway so at least we have time to get ourselves organized this year.
I did start some seeds in our salad table because the climate in there is just begging for lettuce to be grown. It’s humid and warm, condensation all over the cold frame we built. So I added more dirt and generously added some of the worm castings we still had from last year. Then I planted several different kinds of lettuce and some spinach so hopefully we can start eating our own lettuce again very soon. We absolutely loved being able to just whip up a salad whenever we wanted with our own lettuce last year. And since you could see it from inside the kitchen, you always knew if you had enough to eat for dinner. I don’t think we’ve ever eaten as many meals with salads as last year. And since we have plenty of champagne vinegar in the basement waiting for us (it turned out awesome by the way), we need lots of fresh lettuce to accompany it.
We’ll get more soil this weekend to fill up the last section of the table so that can be planted as well. I also need the dirt to start my basil seeds for the kitchen and to plant a bunch of tomato seedlings that one of the neighbors brought over. Apparently they started a ton of seeds and they all germinated…so she’s giving them away by the handful. Literally. She brought over what has to be at least 30 plants…and said to just take the bigs ones. And if we want more, she still has some. Gotta love neighbors like that!
In a wild moment of thought last weekend, Stefan mentioned that since we want to fill our courtyard with plants and life this year, growing the majority of the herbs and veggies that we use regularly within eyesight of our kitchen, perhaps we should think about creating some larger growing beds in the courtyard instead of just buying tons of pots. I have to admit I was a bit freaked out by the idea at first…but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
What we would need to do is dig up a bunch of the pavers in the courtyard, and cut several of them to so there are no gaps. When you set the pavers up on their side, they create a nice border and we have several small beds like this in the courtyard already. But the beds there already are barely big enough to really do much with.
I took some chalk and drew outlines of where the beds could potentially be dug out. It would give us tons more planting space as well as ultimately create less places for clutter and junk to collect.
The big trough you see on the bottom right would be moved to the other side of the courtyard…not a task I’d be looking forward to but knowing when you open the gate you’d see lots of plant life and not just funkiness would make it worth it. Most of them would sit on the sunniest side of the house and we would be able to grow just about everything we can think of within the courtyard. All the really big stuff would still be in the garden but it would also free up space to just have a spot to enjoy the garden in the back too.
This big bed in the back would be the largest…and although there is a bunch of stuff sitting in that area now, all of it could be put away elsewhere. The salad table we would probably put up on pavers and left more or less where it is.
I mean it’s a pretty crazy idea and it would take a lot of work…but we think we could just flex through most of the pavers where they lay now to form the beds…and then we just need to pop them out. We’d also need to remove some gravel and fill in soil and compost…but that would be the easiest stage of the transformation. The gravel would be dumped into the pit of dispair sitting beside our guesthouse. We’ve finally decided we’re just going to fill it in and eventually make it level with the rest of the courtyard. No fish pond, no sludge pond…just a place to stash our grills or put a few chairs.
Oh, and did I mention we’re still thinking about the aquaponics system? We hope to get our plexiglass for the greenhouse next week and will build a small system in there for our chilies and whatever else would thrive. We’re looking forward to sharing lots of info about that experience since it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to get started. But it will put our greenhouse to much better use and we won’t have to worry so much about keeping the plants watered in there anymore.
What we’re going to do with the rest of the garden is yet to be decided…but we’ve even briefly talked about taking out the raised beds and trying out some keyhole gardens. I’m telling you, folks…we are just all over the place with our plans this year…but we hope that everything we decide will ultimately make life easier on us and make the farm more enjoyable overall.
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