In the winter I did a few projects, including cleaning and oiling the garden tools, and re-purposing the zillion (okay, more like 20) paint cans I was left that all had an inch or two of paint left in them. I poured some out, poured all the off-whites together into four full cans of "mucky white" and then used the pastel paint that was left to paint the empties. I'll plant petunias and alyssum and zinnias in these and line my driveway or front walk or patio with them.
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| As Martha Stewart as I ever get |
I also built some bookshelves and stained them. The process in just a few pix is below. I made 3 identical shelves out of the cheapest possible pine.
And I studied up more on gardening and will continue to. The more I learn, the more I gravitate toward no-dig, no-till, minimal weeding, high use of mulch (I have a deal for free wood chips with a local tree service, and I may call a second service to get even more, and I have ten bags of leaf mold cooking in the sun, which is what I'll preferentially use around the veggies as they come up in spring.) I'll probably use some fertilizer the first 2-3 years, but after that, the repeated compost and mulch applications, plus a cover crop (I'm going with clover the first autumn), chopped to the ground in spring and left on the soil to decompose in place should turn the soil into a rich and fertile living thing. Then the mulch should help keep down the weeds, which of course will also love more fertile soil.
As soon as the garage gets warm enough to finish organizing it, I'll turn to making trellises and other garden do-dads. I'm going to try a very early bed of veggies under two layers of cover: a fleece blanket right on the plants, and then PVC hoops with 4 mil plastic clamped over that, a sort of mini greenhouse they call a "low tunnel" these days. Radishes, lettuce, mache, and spinach will go in there, and I'm hoping for a first harvest by April 20 or so.
I'm still spending money, unfortunately. I need to fence against the rabbits, and some t posts and hardware cloth will set me back $75 or so. But after this year, my only cost should be a few new seeds. Most of what I'm planting is heirloom or open pollinated varieties, so I can save my own seeds for a lot of crops: beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, tomatillo, eggplant, and others. The biennial plants (carrots, celery, parsnips, etc.) I'll probably just buy new seed each year--or when I run out, as many seeds are good for 3-5 years. My last purchase was a discounted leaf vacuum/mulcher, which will save my back in making all that leaf mulch. And I'll be able to do my sister's yard, too, and steal her leaves as well! Heck, I might start a neighborhood service.
The big challenge this year will be killing grass and replacing it on the western slope of my property. I got that project started in December's warm spell, with a 20x50 plot of experimental methods of grass-killing, but that's only 1/5 of what I want to kill, and I need to figure out what will be happily planted there that's low-care, perennial, possibly a cash crop, and has a good root system to keep the soil in place. This year's experiments will be rhubarb, lavender started from seed, and two ground covers: roman chamomile and creeping thyme. I probably won't know until next spring what took and survived the winter, so this will likely be a three-year process before I even know what is my most likely crop. Until then, I'll have to mow it some, darn it.
