Our Backyard Garden

Happy New Year!!

This morning I woke up and it was -19 degrees outside! It was so cold that there was ice on the inside of the windows, the dishes in the cabinet felt like they came out of the refrigerator and our mail slot was covered in frost. With these subzero temperatures I thought I would blog about something from a warmer time of year.

When we moved into our house 2 years ago, the backyard was a blank canvas. The lady who previously lived here had no landscaping and the entire yard was just grass to mow. One of the things we were looking forward to with home-ownership was having a vegetable garden. Jeff had a garden growing up and we had tried planter gardens in our previous apartments with little success. So Jeff got right to work on a real garden when the weather warmed up.

The first step to the project was to remove the iron clothesline from the middle of the yard. After digging for a few feet we found that this was a more difficult task than we had thought. In all of our projects we have noticed that the previous owner was very thorough and tended to overbuild things. Which is great for making things last, but when you want to change something, it becomes quite a chore.


Jeff dug until he finally reached the bottom of the pole. It was encased in three feet of concrete! We tried lifting it out of the hole, we tried hanging on the top of the pole to tilt it out, but together we weighed less than the concrete. Jeff decided to call some people for backup, but everybody was busy.



Finally we managed to shimmy it out using wood boards and ropes. Once the pole was out, we were able to sledgehammer the concrete so we could move it out of the yard. After filling the hole with dirt, Jeff got working on digging the plot for the garden. Gnome wanted to help out.


Jeff used reclaimed wood from a fence to build a border to the garden. He then reused the sod to fill in the garden by laying it grass side down. Then he covered it with newspaper and wet it down to act as a barrier to prevent the grass from growing through. Then a layer of top soil and manure finished it off so it was ready for seeds.


It took just about a month for the garden to become amazingly productive! For the entire summer we were able to eat from it. We supplemented any produce that we needed with vegetables from the farmers' market. It was the best food I've ever had and it was so cheap! I think we spent about $15 on seeds at the beginning of the season.


I can't wait for the ground to thaw so we can start growing some fresh organic vegetables again!