Built a compost bin made of cinder blocks. Got them free from a craigslist posting.

It was the only thing that wasnt floating around alst weekedn. :)

Expanded my garden beds to 3000 square feet and am now hobbling around after digging and cultivating the soil to 6 inches deep with a wheel hoe (non-gas, non-electric, just all achy muscle powered! Ugh.)

Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. :) But worth it for next year's flowers.

I really do like my wheel hoe and my newly dug garden, but I should never have rushed the digging to get it all done before the predicted rains that never did show up!

Lynda

Here is a link that might be useful: wheel hoe the instrument of pain

Doris free stuff wonderful. I need a compost bin so bad. Lucky lucky!

Lynda LOL That is going to be one beutiful flower garden. It beter be after that. LOL No rottiller in the house? Or are you going back to history? Ouch I hope you are feeling better. That has got to hurt.....Rub them muscles.... barb

I have been adding new beds, one a holding bed, one for iris and one for next year's annuals. The holding bed was finished mid-summer and is full of seedlings. Trying to get the iris bed finished tomorrow so I can plant all the iris that I got at a fall plants swap. Looking forward to see what colors and varieties as most were labeled, mixed beard. The annual bed is partly done and I am waiting on a neighbor who wants the sod. Got enough done so I could plant the Limelight hydrangea that I got at Costco before last week's nice rain.

All my garden beds are dug by hand with a spade and shovel and garden fork. I have lots of time and need the exercise. Sure understand about aching muscles. Removing the sod takes awhile and then it has to be dragged to the compost pile. Makes great compost.

Lynda, we had a similiar wheel hoe (wheel was larger and handles more upright) when I was a teenager working in my family's huge farm garden.
Not my favorite job. I didn't really like gardening then, too much work. LOL, now I am making the work.

Rosepedal - we do actually have two rototillers. I used one to score the sod, but all of the rest of the work has been good old manual labor.

The wheel hoe is just a really cool tool for cultivation. Aside from the aches and pains it is amazing for working rocky soil with old dead tree roots and a rock-hard pan underneath. You can nudge around rocks and then flip them out, excavate around roots and slice off only the ones you know came from the dead sycamore and not the glorious live 100 year old oak, and you can shave layer after layer off of hard compacted pan and get nice puffy fluffy soil from it.

I'm not usually a fan of that much hard work, but I now know the soil in that garden as well as I know the individual plants I'm growing. I'm really pleased with the quality of the cultivation I got with the hand tool as well. And unless I'm trying to do to much too fast wheel hoeing is also a very pleasant and gentle exercise - much like swimming.

I'd probably be just as ouchie if I tried swimming laps for 14 - 16 hours in a two day period and then chased that with a couple of hours running around with a watering can! What in the world was I thinking. :)

Lynda

LOL I have plenty of milk jugs this year. I've been harvesting some seeds and trying to get my courage up for a SASE offer. I've never done one and I'm skeered. :D

Tndandy - I did an offer last February because I had so many extra seeds leftover from all the seed ordering. Traded with a few people and sent out SASBEs with about 20 people. It's pretty fun.

I still have almost 70 winter-sown seedlings to plant that are in small pots (only 2 or 3 in their original containters). This summer, I spent a lot of time transplanting and planting more of the WS seedlings, and also preparing new garden beds. I'm hoping to get most of them into the ground this fall!

Just rinsed out and dried a bunch of plastic jugs and 2 liter bottles I'm saving for this year. There are 2 garbage bags full of clean containers in the basement, as well as a stack of salad boxes, ready to go for 2009!

And the entire month of August and early Sept. were hijacked by a new hobby, raising Monarch butterflies! Took a break from most gardening activities because I was completely captivated by watching these butterflies grow. The last one was released on Sept. 16th - so now I'm back to the gardens (and doing some home repair).

Hi tndandy, don't be afraid of me, lol. I'll do you right no worries.

This summer I dug a forty foot ditch across my backyard (just me and a shovel) for drainage and am using a hatchet to get rid of the tree roots. I'm also filling it with rounded river rocks to keep my toddler from falling in. I'm calling it a dry stream bed and so far it's really working. Maybe the spring floods won't drown everything next year.

Apart from that added new beds around the garage out back, dug up most of my corner bed and mounded then added a path. Oh and added lots and lots of new plants.

This summer my husband and I had a fence put in on 1 side of our yard, he built me a 3 bin compost bin(that very badly needs to be turned right now, LOL). He has also given me the ok to turn a huge portion of our side yard into flower beds. So I have been collecting cardboard from work and plan on having mulch (plus compost) delivered to top off 6inches. I did a small portion by hand and it was a pain to pull sod, so since I don't need it till next late spring/early summer, I'm just gonna cover it for now.
We also put in an arbor and a natural fence of "Blue Sky" rose of sharon I had started from seed 2 summers ago. 1 soo far has turned out to be a pure white flower, not the blue, but very pretty. He also build a basic wooden fort, plus plastic slide for our 5yr old.

I am doing a small garlic bed this fall and still trying to get some iris's in too. All of the WS stuff has been placed, but still have some bulbs left.

We have been very busy I guess. I don't have any other hobbies though, so I am able to put all my energy into this (boy does the house work suffer though, LOL).

Melissa

moved an entire bed of Irises, decided I hated nearly everything that was happening in my gardens, and as soon as I got the chance (thank you Hannah), I started ripping out everything in sight- which will continue until it gets too cold to work out there.
Other than watching rain fall, I think the summer was pretty much a blur.

lets see, we actually got the gh leveled. and set for the concret to get poured into the area's for the treated wood. that project has taken forever!!!
then i scored 3 55 gal plastic barrels. tabor turned 2 of them into compost barrels for me, i use one of them so far. and he made 2 10x7 i think beds for me for flowers. one is REALLY full!! the other is very dense!! in a week or two we'll be making two more. and as soon as the gh is totally put together we will put a 5x8 one in there for the winter veges for us. we are going to try to grow our vege's, we have been taking clippings of the tomato plants and such that we like and rooting them. hopefully they will produce something. i have some that are already producing now, and if we can keep them going thru the winter. well we'll have some fruit/vege's thru the winter. :') i need to get my bell pepper plant up here and transplanted to keep it going. that is what we've been doing. and our/my goal although tabor say's it'll never work mom!!! i say you gotta have faith!! LOTS of it!! LOL **big smile** ~Medo

I'm now trying to plant bulbs, and make a small arbor for my toddler/morning glories out of all the dead wood the winds knocked down.

Now I'm seeing a bunch of sticks holding up a little boy, with morning glories growing all over him. Nah, that can't be what you meant. Little ones never stand still. ;~)