Ta Da - The Pantry Garden
My new garden is complete & ready to plant - hoorah!
It took one month longer than we thought. While I was a little frustrated, it all worked out wonderfully in the end. Everyone put on their thinking caps (our contractor, my husband, our neighbors, our friends and our family) to help ensure that it was optimally constructed. Everyone seemed to share my passion (or at least pretended to - hahaha!) and I cannot thank them enough! I will make sure they get EXTRA vegetables from my garden!
Since we had about 2 weeks before the contractor returned, we applied roundup to kill the grass and weeds. As you can see in the picture on the right, the contractor needed to return to stretch the fence, etc. and I continued to pray for patience. We sprayed Roundup on the inside edges of the garden as well as the “extra” 8 feet of the garden. I don’t typically like to use herbicides and pesticides, but I decided to use it. According to all the websites, Roundup will stay in the soil for at least 6 months, but you can rototill gardens after 5-7 days of its application.
When the the contractor returned with a fence spreader to evenly stretch the fence to the posts & a new gate more effective to keep out critters, the weeds were dead and we decided to just rototill the weeds with the leaves were were going to apply.
So our contractor had completed his job. But there was fine-tuning that we wanted to do ourselves, because that is part of the fun! In my last post I wrote that we “had” to extend the garden by 8 feet. Can you guess what we had to do to accommodate the slope of this new area? Yes, we needed more dirt. So we had 6 more yards delivered making it a grand total of 20 yards to accommodate the natural slope of the site. But of course, the structure was already completed, so we had to move the soil into the garden using a wheelbarrow. Good thing we installed a 42 inch gate! We had planned to rototill leaves into the garden so we put leaves on top of the grass before we moved the extra dirt into this area. It wasn’t nearly as much work as when we had spread the original 12 yards, but it was an extra step and I wanted to plant already! Patience is a virtue…
After we spread the dirt, we applied about 3 inches of dry leaves before we rototilled. Remember the extensive leaf piles I showed in previous posts? I had been spreading the leaves, turning the piles to dry the next layer, etc. It is best to rototill dry leaves rather than wet ones because the rototiller can break up dry ones easier. The leaves were already semi-decomposed, so it provides an even better augmentation to the soil.
We had railroad ties installed to retain the dirt that we needed to fill in the slope. But since the fencing wasn’t attached to the railroad ties, my husband used his handy-dandy staple gun to connect them. After all, doesn’t every man have a staple gun?!?!? And remember my concerns about keeping out the critters? Yes, the 6 ft fence will keep deer out, but I don’t want critters chomping on my root vegetables so we (my husband) installed 2 feet of chicken wire around the garden. But it had to somehow be connected to the fencing itself so that it was taut. He had planned on attaching pieces of wire to hold them together. But my Victory Garden partner suggested using hog rings instead. I had never heard of such a thing! Hog rings are put into a hog’s snout to keep them from rooting in the dirt. Apparently the ring hurts their snout and so the hog learns not to root. Yikes! My father-in-law, who grew up on a hobby farm, agreed that we should use them. Grandpa raised some hogs & that is what he did. So it was confirmed, we decided to go the “hog-ring route”. It is quite ingenious. Basically, hog rings are c-shaped fasteners. Luckily, they weren’t hard to find in rural WI. It was pretty cool to watch. My husband squeezed the hog ring pliers between pieces of the fencing & the chicken wire and the wire hog ring popped out and basically created a ring which held the pieces together. The pliers came loaded with 1,000 rings and we used about half of them. That’s alot of hog rings! It was much faster & more effective than connecting them with wire. It was a great recommendation!
So then we rented a rototiller and my husband started with The Pantry Garden. See all the leaves? The new topsoil & the existing dirt underneath will absolutely love all the microorganisms that have been digesting the organic material to help provide nutrients to the garden from Day 1. Because we were not rototilling compacted dirt, we only had to rototill once.
We borrowed a trailer from a friend to bring leaves to The Victory Garden. I forgot to take a picture of it, but believe me, we hauled ALOT of leaves to the garden. After all, The Victory Garden is 35 ft by 35 ft — that is alot of square feet! My Victory Garden partners decided that since the asparagus & strawberry sections had been producing for almost 2 decades, their production had decreased over time & that we should rototill them over. They just weren’t producing as much as in previous years. I was a little sad, but I knew we would make the most of this newly created space and plant vegetables we had never grown before.
We had to rototill The Victory Garden twice because of the root systems & the compacted soil. Then we spread about 2 inches of dry leaves to most of the garden. Then we rototilled one more time to incorporate the leaves. Then I raked the weeds and tossed them onto my yard waste heap. (I don’t compost weeds because my compost pile never reaches 131 degrees which is the temperature needed to kill them & their spores. Maybe I need to create a hot composting bed. I can do that next year I guess - hahaha). I needed to save some leaves to continue my composting so I didn’t apply 3 inches as I did in The Pantry Garden. It is more important to continue my aerobic & anaerobic composting. I will use this gardening gold to augment the holes in which I plant, a thin layer around the top and then another top applications in mid-July. It took about 4 hours to rototill both gardens, but it will be worth it!
I have to give a big shout-out (another one!) to my great husband. He always supports me in all my endeavors no matter how big or small, no matter how nutty they may seem or no matter how much time they take. While this blog is just about my gardens, believe me, he supports all my initiatives! What a great guy! I consider myself lucky to spend the rest of my life with him. Now that the gardens are prepped, he can spend more time fishing! It is another great match made in heaven — fresh fish & fresh vegetables.
So I think both gardens looks great and I am ready to plant! We had several jokes about The Pantry Garden though. One of my daughters said it looks like a jail. When I told this to my neighbors, they laughed & said that a jail will keep things in and keep things out & that the fence around The Pantry Garden will do this. Another neighbor chuckled and said, “it was only a matter of time before my husband locked me up”. Hysterical! Of course my neighbors & friends have been stopping by to check on progress beginning with the installation of the well. It has also made me laugh that I continue to meet new neighbors (and I have been here 15 years!) who have been stopping by to check things out. As the Spring progressed, even people who are renting have stopped by to investigate. I think I will have a lot of visitors at The Pantry Garden (and again at The Victory Garden) this year. I might have to bring coffee & donuts for garden visits! Heck, I may have to start gardening in the afternoon and have impromptu cocktail parties!
So I know that this is a long post, but so many people have been asking me how we are creating the garden from scratch. So I thought you would enjoy not only the pictures, but also some of the specifics & philosophies I am employing. Thanks for sticking with me and reading all the specifics.
Spring is in full-swing and it is my favorite month. I hope you are enjoying this season of rejuvenation, renewal and regrowth as much as I am! This year Spring seems sweeter than usual because we are visiting in person, seeing more people than last year & usually not wearing masks (because the vaccines work!). It almost seems like the sun is shining brighter and the flowers smell sweeter!
I hope you are enjoying Spring to the fullest no matter how you are spending your days. I hope you are finding joy in your gardens, digging into the fertile soil & finding a lot of worms (some say they are the hardest-working persons in the garden). If you haven’t started your garden or are new to gardening, it is never too late to start. Just buy a seed packet or a plant, dig a hole and start. You will be so happy you did! Until next time, make the most of every moment you have in this wonderful season!