Prepping The Garden For 2013 And Other Chores

I'm going to be brutally honest with you, our yard looks like crap.

Yup, I said it. We're pretty busy people, and after owning a bakery for a couple of years and working nearly open to close every single day really does a number on a yard. This year, I am planning to get everything back in working order and making the yard look like it did back when it was in its prime pristine state. Ok, so maybe not every pricker and every tree is going to come down, but I'm going to tackle as much as I can!

I've already cleaned out the garden beds of roots and dried stems and anything that found itself in there over the winter. I've pruned the grapes and raked all the leaves out of the greenhouse space; and this year instead of using organic fertilizer, I kind of committed an organic gardening sin and bought miracle grow. I know, I know, organic gardening but not really. But listen, I'm working on making my own modernized compost bin and don't forget I bought cheapskate soil last year!

I dug half the moat around the greenhouse and will probably finish it tomorrow so I can put the tarp on and start my planting, since it's still high season for carrots and lettuces. Also, there is a space in front of the secondary house that needed quite a bit of cleaning. I did not take a "before" picture, but the boxwoods were so overgrown they covered the entire area, and whatever space they didn't cover, thick prickers filled it. A good pair of sharp hedge clippers, some elbow grease, and an hour or so later I have a nice pile of firewood and some bare stumps. I'm sure they would regrow into a manageable size if left alone, but I really wanted to put some Pinterest ideas to use and do a lovely cottage garden.

Besides, boxwoods are great just as long as they are maintained. If something goes awry with flowers, a good lawn-mowing will solve the problem.

Heres today's escapades:

Cleared beds and added fertilizer, also raked most of the leaves out

What's left of those mangy boxwoods and pricker patches.

A side note of the white border on that last picture, we had some tiles leftover from when we put a stone backsplash in the kitchen that I thought would be interesting to mark out a border. I don't intend to keep them there, by any means, I just wanted to see how a border would look in that space, and both my brother and my father asked me where I got the tombstones. Not funny.

I would like to do something like a small 12" iron fence on the border with some flowers and things behind it, but it may be a bit adventurous for right now. Ideally, it would be nice to have a small stone wall with an iron fence, but that's getting way to detailed and adding way to much work to someone else's to-do list. Because after all, there's no way I'm building something like that myself.

I have some great ideas of my own, but I love seeing what others come up with too. If you'd like to follow me on Pinterest, you can view my page here.