Garden Transformation

Well, my staycation is over and I think I have some good progress to show for it. (I definitely have some sore muscles to show for it. Let me tell ya, a desk job does not prepare you for heavy-duty gardening!) What I really wanted to do during the vacation was spend some time with the kiddo (mission accomplished, we had a great time!) and do some renovation work on the garden. 

This was no run-of-the-mill garden work. I didn't just want to pull out the summer plants and put in the fall plants. No, I wanted to make some changes. Specifically, I wanted to till the soil beneath the raised beds to promote better root growth and cram the beds closer together to make room for more vegis. 

I still haven't finished all of that, but I've done most of it. I have some seed potatoes on order and should receive them next week. I'm hoping to get the last raised bed built and in place before then. Once the potatoes are planted, I can call this baby complete. Still, I did enough that I wanted to show it off. 

Here's the step-by-step on the garden transformation. 

Step 1: Take one last look at the happy summer garden. So peaceful.  

Step 2:  Say bye-bye to the okra, corn, and raised beds. Bye bye!  

Step 3: Till the soil beneath the raised beds to promote better root growth. Thank your husband profusely for dealing with the heavy machinery required to make this happen. 

Step 4: Plop the raised beds back into the space, adding a mix of the native soil, the store bought dirt, and compost to the beds. (To the left is the space that's waiting for bed number 3 this weekend.) 

Step 5: Plant the fall garden!

This is the first year that I'm planting the whole garden from seed. No nursery starts! Seeing how all that works out should definitely make for some good blog posts down the line.

Update:

The last bed is in! If I do say so myself, this is starting to look pretty good!

I've Found My People

So I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm kind of obsessed with vegetable gardening. (Shocking revelation, huh?) The obsession is relatively new, so it's not like my friends and loved ones knew what they were signing up for when they became my friends and loved ones. Still, they are being very patient with me, despite the fact that it's probably wearing pretty thin. You gotta wonder how many backyard gardening photos you can post on Facebook before your friends start being "busy" when you call. ("Another picture of a plant. Wow, Claudette. Fascinating.")

So I've found some people who appear to be as obsessed as me. They are the Tucson Backyard Gardening Facebook group, and they are awesome. They answer questions that people have about their gardens. They compare stories. They tell geeky garden jokes. They are just the people I was looking for.

A couple of days ago, I posted a picture of a tree that caught my fancy in a local nursery, and it sparked a whole conversation in the forum. I think it topped out at about a dozen comments. About a tree. I'm in love.

If you're looking for like-minded people so that you can give your poor forlorn loved ones a break from your incesant gardening talk, may I recommend the Tucson Backyard Gardening Facebook group? Your friends and family will thank you.

Well, Not Every Experiment is Going to Work

Just in case you were under the impression that I knew what I was doing, I thought I'd tell you about my little adventures in growing corn this year. I'm pretty sure I made a rooky mistake. I've been thinking for a while that the corn would be ready "any time now." Finally, I pulled back the husk of one of the ears of corn today. Here's what greeted me:

Ug. That's 3 little kernels surrounded by a whole lot of nuthin. A quick look on the Internet immediately revealed my problem: lack of pollination. Another look at the Internet revealed why they didn't pollinate: I didn't plant enough. (Not by a long shot.) Apparently I should have planted 36 plants at once. 36! This is my scrawny little corn patch:

Yes, if it takes 36 plants to get some good pollination going, I can see why this didn't work. Ah well. (Also, you may notice a few bean plants at the bottom of those corn husks. I planted those waaaaaaaay too late, so those are bust too.)

This vegetable gardening thing is all an experiment for me, which means there are bound to be some lows along with the highs. Ah well, better luck next year. In the meantime, I guess I'll start looking for ways to preserve corn, since 36 plants next year is going to produce an awful lot corn.