We spent the day revising our current raised flower garden bed. We built the plot last year for just ornamental flowers and a place to feed the birds. There was also enough space for a couple of tomato plants and some lettuce. Well this year, I have more time to spend gardening and caretaking for plants so we wanted more fresh garden vegetables. Gardening is also one of Kirk’s previous passions; he really enjoys spending the evenings in the garden. Our problem was the yard area or lack there of. It is not very large and we didn’t want to give up a lot of space because the child and hyper hounds need a place to move and run around.
First we expanded the existing bed by adding more to the east with some bricks that we still had from last year. The addition reduced some of the walking space between the bed and the clothes line pole. However, there is still plenty of room to walk through without getting clothes-lined! The dirt in the bed was terribly hard, lumpy and difficult to work with so we mixed in sand, peat moss, and some new topsoil. The kids mixed, turned, pulled and pushed mixing the new additions with the existing dirt that Kirk had previously tilled. Once it was full, Kirk came back through and tilled again. The new mixture was a tremendous improvement to the quality of the soil.
Next, we mixed up equal parts of new topsoil, sand and peat moss in the yard wagon to fill large pots and other containers. We will be trying some container garden this year. Containers will help up utilize the limited space that we have. And since we got a late start at this, I am hoping we will be able to bring container pots in and keeping them going late into the fall.
We also planted green beans around the fence posts and peas in a small wasted space between the property line and the other clothes line pole. Urban gardening on small ground does create some challenges however I was amazed that amount of wasted space we did find once we started looking. Oh sure, I won’t have enough produce to do much canning or freezing but we will have some fresh organic vegetables and the kids are learning a new skill. And that absolute best part is…we did it together!
Thanks for all your help today, kids!
