It’s been a while since I posted an update. We’ve been in our house for 3 months now – and everything is going pretty nicely! We finally had the fence put in at the beginning of May. We fenced in nearly an acre – so it was a pretty big project (luckily we hired someone else to do it for us!). The dogs LOVE their new big back yard. I’ve ordered a bunch of vines (ivy, wisteria, miscellaneous berries, clematis) to plant along the fence, and we’re going to try some grapes too. Fun, fun!

We still haven’t hit the last frost date, so the garden is a bit bare. I’m hoping to seed the rest of the vegetables (corn, squash, beans…) this weekend, and hopefully the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant can be planted in two weeks.

Side view of the garden, the onions are doing well! We didn’t have luck with onions in our (clay) soil before, so hopefully they will do better in our new yard.

Radishes, beets, turnips, Brussels Sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli.

Strawberry!

Not too exciting, but here is where the raspberries start. They are planted in a 75′ line – 1/2 standard, the other 1/2 everbearing. Two red varieties (Kilarney and Heritage), one black (Jewel), and one yellow (Fallgold). 6 plants / 18 feet of each variety. These won’t fruit until next year, and we won’t have a “real crop” for three or four.

Blueberries! Four varieties – I hope they get enough sun here. We have to work with the soil to keep it acidic, so I didn’t want them planted by the rest of the garden. These won’t produce a crop for 4 years; we may get a few fruits the third year, but you are supposed to cull most of the flowers until the plants are well-established.

Here’s the view of my house from the north, in the street. (You can’t see the house? Good – we like it that way!)

Side view of the crab apples. Oh yeah, and our new fence. We fenced in just about an entire acre. I have a bunch of vines on order (ivy, wisteria, honeysuckle, bittersweet, and clematis) to plant on the fence. We’re going to try some grapes too (that’s what the holes/mess of dirt in the front is for).

Bluebird house! I hung this the other month. The instructions said, “For bluebirds, hang 4-5 feet high.” And what do you know? Two moths later, we have bluebirds living in it!

Side yard and the shed. No, we don’t have a riding lawn mower.

Patio in the back.

View of the back from the patio, and our willow tree.

View of the pond from the patio. The pond is starting to dry out, and the cattails are coming in.

It is Spring, right? You could have fooled me. Weather Underground tells me that it is a 51.8º right now – but I’m not sure if I believe that.

No, really. It IS Spring. The solstice was more than two weeks ago. And this is what we do in the spring:

… only to wake up the next morning to this:

::Sigh:: My tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are nearly a month old now – I was worried about germination, because the seeds were all from 2007. But they are doing quite well, and can’t wait for 70º days.

The new garden is just under 50′ x 25′ – we rented a sod cutter to strip out the grass – it’s going to save us a lot of work this summer, but it’s also going to be a lot of work this week rolling the sod and moving it to our compost pile.

Our county has a free-for-all compost site, and we have picked up three truck loads so far.

We plan on at least three more loads, more if we can handle it. The plan is to till this weekend, and plant part of the garden if there’s time. The soil here is really sandy, so the more compost we can work in, the better. Here is progress so far:

And, coming at the end of April/Early May… 24 raspberry plants (red, black, and yellow!) and 4 blueberry bushes! We won’t have a berry crop this year – and you are supposed to wait until the FOURTH year for blueberries (cutting off the flowers so the plant gets established). Gopher1 was out today marking buried lines, so now we can decide where to plant the berries.

Oh – and T-minus-three-weeks (or so) until the fence is up :)