For the last few summers, while I was off bartending at the golf course, Derek has been in charge of the vegetable gardens at our house. This year, Derek is busy working a second job in the evenings and on weekends, so the responsibility of the garden has been left up to me. Mine and Derek's work style is very different. Me: pretty laid back, not in too much of a hurry to get things done, I prioritize sleep and eating. Derek: all business, we needed to finish this project yesterday, and no rest until the job is done. I think he had his doubts that I'd ever get anything planted.
The before picture of the gardens is a bit embarrassing, but hey, the cold, wet spring season made it tough to get motivated to get out there. Normally, Derek would have at least tilled the gardens for me, but alas, both of our gas powered tillers are currently out of commission and Derek has zero time to work on them. No biggie, I weeded and cultivated that mess all by hand. The $15 spent at Mills Fleet Farm for
The Garden Claw was a priceless investment. And a big thank you goes out to Liz, Kels, and Kate who were up for the Memorial Day weekend and let me put them to work pulling out the monster weeds. Yes, those back two beds were near completely overgrown, and the weeds were even taller by the time I actually got to them.
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| BEFORE: Vegetable Gardens 5.23.11 |
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| AFTER: Vegetable Gardens 6.10.11 |
It would have looked a little better if I had trimmed the weeds around the outside, but I'm too big of a wimp to pull start the mega weed whip that I'd have to use. Regardless, they've come a long way. That's garlic coming up in the foreground; we planted it last fall. And in the back of that third garden bed, you can see four raspberry bushes that we planted last fall as well. There are five beds total, and the things I planted this year are: yellow onions, red onions, red potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, sweet corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, peas, radishes, spinach, and four kinds of tomatoes (15 tomato plants total).
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| Vegetable Gardens 6.10.11 |
Wow! That is amazing. Derek must be proud. :)
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday night he was able to help me and just kept saying, "Geez, this must take you forever." Yes, it does, but I'm not in a hurry. And I wasn't even taking very many breaks when he was around. :) And then he would list off all of the other things that he wanted to get done before dark. Did I ever tell you about the time he said to Liz, "Come on, we've got to get to work. There are only four and half hours of daylight left today." Very serious about getting work done.
ReplyDeleteDerek always has been serious about getting work done... but referencing the daylight hours is pushing it.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a dumb question, but what's under the buckets?
Haha. I realize that all of my comments make Derek sound like a real slave driver. The daylight hours reference is now something that we joke pretty heavily about. He put an app on his phone that has the sunrise and sunset time every day. There are small tomato plants under the buckets - I have cages on others already, they were just a variety of sizes when they started.
ReplyDelete