New land

Sometimes when you don't have land you have to create your own. 

Last year I borrowed space.  Apparently I was inspirational, and the resident wants to try her hand at gardening herself.  Humph. 

Okay, then what?  I ran out of carrots and beans and I really don't like it when that happens.  I've still got tomatoes in the pantry, but only because Rosa had better success than I and shared.  As she learns more about what she and her family really eat (as opposed to what she might like to grow), I will get less and less of her bounty each fall. 

What to do, what to do. 

One morning I went out in my wet shoes and traced a line in the grass and threw some stones in a pattern.

Out of curiousity, I asked the kids before school what they thought of the shape.  When Yvon came home from work, I asked him what he thought and we altered it a bit to accommodate the lawn mower a bit.  Our impromptu dinner guests were concerned about how to access our yard with a double-wide stroller, but I'm just not designing with that in mind.  I've given her permission to trample any plants I'm stupid enough to plant close to our actual sidewalk. 

By the time I went to bed (exhausted), this is what I had.

New land!  Not much perhaps, and it's not terribly deep soil, but it will be fine next year as the layer of cardboard starts to decompose and the layer of sod beneath that.  In spite of the load of compost I brought in this year, I'm running out and couldn't mound it the way I would have liked.  (By the way, free mushroom compost can be had at Prairie Mushrooms if you've got a vehicle.  Call first and request their oldest compost.  I didn't.) For now, it's all planted up with shallow-rooted veggies. 

Done! 

I also gained some new pots, lined them up in an old useless spot and hope to get a few peppers from here.  Much as I hate our stucco wall here, I would love to have that vine cover the wall.  However, it's already covered with whitefly and I think I'm going to cut the happy vine down. 

Last year Yvon cut down part of the neighbours hedge (with permission, of course).  The ground is full of 50 year old hedge roots which I couldn't quite deal with this year.  Nor did I want to look at the orange snow fence.  Oddly, it doesn't show in this picutre, but it's really quite ugly.  The plan is to plant an edible hege here.  Maybe saskatoons and cherries.  However, without adequate soil to plant in at the moment, I'm sure they wouldn't do well yet.  Time for an experiment.

Four hay bale with squash.  I'm hoping the squash will both climb and tumble down the bales.  Either way, it's additional space I didn't have last year.  Yay!  Now I have to remember to fertilize and water these as if they were in planters.  Not my strong suit.

I have a few nice looking pots though, so I'm hoping to build on the skill of potted plants this summer.

So, it's been a busy week and the garden is almost all in.  Just a few more seeds to throw in and I'm done.  I didn't even tell you about our little trip to Jasper yet either.  Maybe I'll have more time online this week.