So it begins!

12 years ago

Hi everyone! Now that I have a husband and the wedding and honeymoon are behind us, I can turn my attention to gardening again! For starters, I want to show some of the gorgeous tropical landscaping from our bed and breakfast in Hawaii. What made me especially jealous was that they said they did all of this in just three years. It must be nice to have a 365 day growing season and reliable rainfall. Sigh.

And here's some initial groundbreaking of my veggie garden! Right now I'm just turning over the grass and weeds with a shovel. The neighbors think I'm crazy for doing this by hand of course and keep asking me why my husband isn't doing it. Pshh, I like hard work, and it feels awesome to be able to do something outside besides stand around with a hose in 100-degree heat.

I'll borrow my sister's truck next weekend and rent a tiller for the really hard part, which is breaking up the sandstone-ish hardpan. It's been kind of hit or miss so far. In some places the soil is soft, deep, and sandy, and in others it's either coming up in chunks of clay or I'm hitting the sandstone layer just a few inches down. I'm curious to see what the tiller can do on the hard stuff. I also found a golf ball buried in the ground, which was a quite random discovery. This house was built on abandoned pasture land, so I'm guessing that the fill dirt came from somewhere else. I should really do a soil test.

After the tilling is done I'll start amending the beds with compost, set up the bed edging and fences, and mulch the pathways. I'm going to try to take pictures as I go.

It's just so nice to be doing something again after this dreadful summer. I'm excited about getting started!

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Comments (8)

greenacreslady
12 years ago
Congratulations on your wedding, miraje. You picked a beautiful location for your honeymoon!

On your future veggie garden, you're coming along nicely. It looks like it will be a nice size garden when you're all finished. Are you going to put anything around it to help keep out the grass? We didn't when we put ours in early this year, and now we're wondering if we should go back and put something around the perimeter.

Suzie
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miraje
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks Suzie! Yep, I bought some pound-in black plastic edging from HD that I will put all around the perimeter. It sinks in about 6 inches and is a nice sturdy hard plastic, so I think it'll do a decent job of keeping the grass out. I'll put down cardboard and a thick layer of woodchip mulch along all the pathways, too. The less weeding I have to do, the happier I'll be! I hate pulling bermuda.
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My canned good are still good from irma, i have 2 jugs of water and some smaller bottles but i likely need a few more, always need more. I do fill 6 large mason jars with water and put in the fridge when a storm threatens and fill every pitcher with water for the cats. And i fill two large plastic lidded bins with water for flushing and bathing. I have 3 bottles of gator aid, which let me tell you if you have to work outside after a storm cleaning fallen debris is wonderful as you lose so much salt while sweating with no ac to cool off in. I have batteries, lamp oil, candles and matches btw cheap dollar store solar yard lights are not a bad way of keeping a little safe light on in the house at night. I pull my yard lights in before a storm and ready to use them indoors. I have a generator arriving this coming weekend, its my sister's and she is moving and has asked me to keep it for awhile, she said use if i need to, its big enough to run the fridge but not the ac. Got my battery operated radio and a radio that can be hand cranked that gets the weather stations. I bought enough cat crates to evacuate the cats in my escape from irma. And have since bought a sleeping bag and have it and other bedding in a box ready to grab if need to escape. I evacuated to my brother in Georgia for irma. He is my closet relative out of florida but it was not ideal cause irma headed for his place and while for florida standard it was not much of a blow, it blew enough to down his power and when he loses power he loses water as he is on a well. So he had a houseful and no working bathroom. I might aim for south carolina next time and my neice, she says she has plenty of room.
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joellenh
12 years ago
How gorgeous. One of these days I want to retire to Hawaii. PARADISE!

Jo
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adellabedella_usa
12 years ago
I'm jealous. I didn't see any bermuda.
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Macmex
12 years ago
Beautiful! Congratulations on getting married!
A mattock might be useful in breaking up hard pan. That's probably the most indispensable tool in my garden, due to the hard soil.

George
Tahlequah, OK
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owiebrain
12 years ago
Gorgeous!! I lived in Hawaii for a couple of years and still hanker for it.

Congrats on the wedding!! I've been MIA around here for a bit so I missed the big day. Hope it was everything you dreamed of and that your marriage is long and filled with just enough craziness to keep it fun!

Diane
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miraje
Original Author
12 years ago
Thank you for the congrats!

George, I bought a pick axe for that very reason, but after I found out how cheap it is to rent a tiller I figured I'd give that a try first. I really hope it does the trick and saves me from having to break it all by hand. Also, I haven't forgotten about the chaste tree seeds! I think they're almost ready to be collected off the shrubs. They just need to dry out a little bit more.

I envy you for getting to live there, Diane! A week was not nearly long enough, and we only got to see one island. We may have to plan another trip back someday.
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
12 years ago
Congrats on your marriage, and thanks for sharing your photos of Hawaii with us---I am so starved for something (anything!) that is lush and green and happy. Looking at your photos takes my mind off our brown landscape.

Good luck with the veggie garden. Breaking ground by hand is so hard, yet oddly satisfying because you're getting a start on building the 'vision' you have in your mind. I prefer a tiller when breaking new clay soil, but will use hand tools in sandy loam or sand.

The cooler weather is great but we're still too busy with VFD stuff for me to have any real time to work in the garden. When I'm home, I mostly just focus on keeping all the animals fed, the waterers filled and the landscape area around the house watered. I'm hoping that after mid-Oct., I'll have more time to be home working in the yard and garden.

Your random discovery of the buried golfball was pretty funny. We have dug up all sorts of odd stuff here at our place, which once was a farm, including old soft drink bottles, really large nails, a couple of large railroad spikes, horseshoes, odd bits and pieces of oil well type nuts and bolts and stuff, and, once, an old metal bucket that was more rust than anything else. If the ground could talk, imagine the stories it could tell.
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So it begins!

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greenacreslady

miraje
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So it begins!

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greenacreslady

mirajeOriginal Author

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owiebrain

mirajeOriginal Author

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