We’ve been locked down since Monday of last week and it looks like that’s about to end come this Monday. Still have to get through one more night of damn cold (vice fu@king cold) weather tonight but 6 is not unbearable. It was 6 when I took the dogs out for a walk at 5 this morning.
The rain may pooh-poo a Wednesday fishing opportunity, but it’s not like there’s not plenty to do around here. My largest major project is the downsizing of my garden. It’s not that it is too large for the amount of planting I want to do, it’s just too large a task maintaining the ground that I’m not planing into.
Generally I’m set up as in graphic below. Excluding the fruit trees the area is 60 feet by 120 feet. The small rectangles are 4×12 foot raised planting beds made with treated deck lumber. The large rectangles are 30 by 40 foot planting areas. The planting area at the top of the graphic is covered in heavy woven plastic sheeting with holes burned into them at 1 foot intervals.
The area between them is covered with ‘crusher run’ (gravel) over a heavy plastic cover. Here is a view (south side of the garden looking north north east) of my Roma tomatoes in the raised boxes.
This photo taken from the north side looking south. Young pepper plants in the foreground.
The perimeter fencing is 8 inch by 8 foot treated poles (little black squares) concreted 2 feet into the ground. between these poles I’ve pounded in tee posts and then wrapped the area in 5 ft high fencing. To keep the deer out I’ve run two lines of metal weaved plastic line (normally used in electric fencing) across the top of the posts and then half way between the post and the fence. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that what I’ve done will not keep deer out of a garden. That may be so, but it’s kept deer out of my garden.
The maintenance problem arises from the spaces between the planting boxes. Any blown seed that lands on the gravel will begin to grow. I know it’s hard to believe but 80 percent of the time I was spending in the garden was spent on beating back the weeds. I’ve had enough of it, I’m going to cut the garden in half lengthwise.
- move the boxes that are on the south side to the north sided and place them on top of the existing boxes.
- Cut the large planting area on the top of the graphic by more than half
- Overlay the large planting area on the bottom right with plastic weave.
- Reestablish the fencing
Taken together the total time I spend on weeding should be reduced to a very doable 40 percent.
But first, I’ve got to get through these next two days!