WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM FOR: GARDEN

I'm spending last week and this week on SECRET THINGS (patrons, you'll see soon!), so for this Monday's update, I give you: GARDEN.

It's hard to believe I only got into gardening LAST year, because now I feel like my entire life is GARDEN LIFE, unfortunately for Luke, who gets hourly updates on my green bean seedlings.

But I'm actually not going to share my vegetable garden with you yet, because it's still in progress, and I've spent the last two months focusing on THIS:

My neighbors were trashing an old privacy fence, and I snatched up four sections of it before I really knew what I was going to do with it. I'm dedicated to using as much trash for my garden as possible,  because a) environmental impact and 2) TRASH = FREE. 

Long story short, as much as I loved it, this Rose of Sharon in the corner of my yard had to go, so...

I cut it down as far as I could, and used Procreate to mock up a (hyperbolic) plan.

THIS SHIT TOOK FOREVER, but it's fun. >:) Since the fence was old and probably treated, I indulged and ordered seeds for flowers instead of food. Nasturtium, three different colors of strawflower, dara, yarrow, and catnip (gotta keep the furry rodents happy), and I had zinnia and marigold seeds from the flowers I harvested last year.

I even did a side view!

I was probably doing this on a Sunday night to avoid coloring Elephant Town (it's my least favorite part). Once the weather got nice I started sawing the fence pieces apart...

... and lying them in place.

(I cheated, the cedar boxes are NOT trash, but they were on hella clearance and I couldn't help myself. They're raised up on top of trashed bricks from the front walkway of my childhood home.)

I count bamboo as trash, because it's a trash weed that everyone gets sick of cutting down, so I decided to use it to stake the fence pieces into the ground. I cut down and machete'd a bunch of bamboo from a friend's yard one afternoon, and cut it all down into sharp stakes, like so:

And then got to work!

The old chopsticks along the edge of the first tier are there to keep Pip and Ollie out, and I attached some used deer netting to a bamboo pole to keep them from using it as a litter box, in case they DO get in.

A week or two past the germination date of the seeds I sprinkled, I noticed that nothing was coming up. And then Luke sent me this photo:

The deer netting kept the cats from peeing in the raised bed, but it didn't keep them from using it like a HAMMOCK. So I doubled up security.

(The wire grids were found in some college kid's trash can last year. There are herbs up in the boxes now - thyme, dill, and parsley, and a new rosemary plant in the metal bucket, which has no bottom - great for drainage! - which was found in another trash pile.)

I finished the bottom section and, after awhile, these big hardy seedlings started popping up EVERYWHERE!

They were all over the place: in the bottom tier (where I did NOT plant them!), along the edges and even down along the fence line. I decided Pip must have been picking up the seeds from where I sprinkled them, and played gardener himself. Who can blame him? Apple from the tree and all that.

There were actually MORE seedlings where I didn't plant them than where I did plant them. I decided to transplant the ones that were growing outside the new beds, and I noticed something odd: 

These seedlings were not emerging from the teeny tiny flower seeds that I could barely see when I strew them. 

Backtrack to November of 2021, when the beautiful decorative pumpkins Luke and I got for Halloween...

... began to rot, and we were too lazy to drag them to the back of the yard to compost. 

Computer, zoom in on the Rose of Sharon photos.

Ah. Yes. The fence line, where we left the pumpkins to rot all winter long. And then I used the soil it rotted into as a base for this raised bed. Right.

I have inadvertently created a pumpkin patch.

So, well, I guess I'll have pumpkins this year.

I pulled out and gave away all of the pumpkin seedlings in the top tier, because I'm still holding out hope for my pretty dara and strawflowers and yarrow. Here's what Danielle's Inadvertent Pumpkin Patch looks like as of today:

Is that enough garden content for your Monday? No? Good, because I made a wattle fence.

A wattle fence is just a fancy/goofy name for a woven fence. I cut down more bamboo, this time picking as many small flexible stalks as I could find, then ripped up the grass from the space around my barrel of mint:

I kept the stakes about 8" apart...

... and then wove two similar stalks up at the top of the stakes (in alternate front-back patterns), before pushing them both down to the ground together. This keeps the stakes relatively straight, instead of weaving the first stalk in one direction, pushing it down (thus putting tension on each stake in just one direction), and then weaving the next one the opposite directions. I hope that makes sense. This gal had really good tips! 

I only found enough small bamboo stalks to finish one side, so I followed this BEAUTIFUL instructional video I watched over lunch about how to split bamboo... except I don't have a bamboo knife, I only have a machete. So it wasn't a perfect job, but it finished the wattle fence.

I planted jalapeños up front (full sun), basil in the back (some shade), and I'm waiting on habaneros next week. This is mostly Luke's section - there will be "cilantro" (SOAP), too.

Here's the before and after of the whole corner!

And here's a before and after of my work on the veggie garden this week, just to give you an idea of where I'm at so far:

The kale plants (which are now NOT being choked out by clover) are still going strong from last year (they're biennials!). The front trellises have sugar snap peas and long green beans, two zucchini plants just went in near the center, and back near the wall are a couple of tomato plants and four scarlet runner beans I grew from last year's seeds.

If I can find a started cantaloupe, those will go in next! And a few more trellises for more  green beans and snap peas. It should look really different the next time I share it with you!

Apparently I have a "garden" tag, so if this was NOT ENOUGH GARDEN for you, you can peek in on what I did last year by clicking on the tag. Enjoy, my fellow garden goobers!