I began garden blogging in 2006. There have always been small blocks of time where I didn't create any new posts, but nothing like the almost 11 month absence I just had!
I like to look ahead, especially when it comes to gardening. Planning for and dreaming of a bountiful beautiful garden is always a fun and rewarding thing. Looking back to bad times is difficult and usually not recommended, but I feel that I need to first look back on the last eleven months to explain my absence in the garden and this site, and to learn from it to make this year's garden (and blog) even better.
As I briefly mentioned in my last post back in August 2011, Most of my time was being spent away from the garden since my aunt developed cancer and had to spend a month in the hospital. She never regained enough strength or functionality to return home and had to live in a nursing facility until she passed away on October 7, 2011. My family and I spent a great deal of time visiting her in the nursing home for those few months. I was her power of attorney and helped her keep track of all of her doctor visits and treatments. After she passed, as her executor, a mind-blowing amount of time was needed for funeral and estate matters. I had no idea that probate was so involved. I had to deal with attorneys, bankers, realators, auctioneers, the county clerk and court magistrate. We had plenty to do paying bills, cleaning and selling the house, prepping for and having an estate auction and communicating continually with the heirs. It is much like having a second job.
I am not complaining mind you. Serving my aunt at the end of her life and even in death has been a great blessing and we are almost at the end of this journey - which is why I am now able to get back to gardening and garden writing.
So how did the garden end up in 2011?
Other than harvesting what we could in a hurry, we spent no time in the garden from the middle of July on. I had no idea how bad weeds could get with no gardener intervention. I've had weeds in the garden in the past, but nothing like the forest of weeds that emerged last Fall. Pictures don't even adequately show how bad it was, but look at these:
We were not even able to clean this up before winter! Even after attempting to mow around the raised beds, the beds looked like this:
Left over the winter like this, it was almost hopeless. There was no way to get those weeds out of the bed without tilling and tilling completely in a raise bed has its challenges. My wife and I love raised beds but we decided for this year only, we would remove them entirely. That way we could mow down the weeds and roto-till the soil. This next picture shows that process underway. Just for fun, I'm putting a similar angle picture from last Fall right below it for comparison.
That's quite a difference! The other good thing about removing the beds and tilling is that I can easily add more organic material. I created three long "beds" and added compost, peat moss, and a little manure.
Other than adding compost, everything about this year's garden is different for us than in the past. Now wood framed beds, no cool seasen veggies were planted (got to rebuilding the garden a bit too late), warm season vegetables were planted several weeks later than in previous years and I had to use store-bought plants instead of my own!
I'm optomistic that we will still be able to have a good vegetable garden this year and am looking forward to documenting it again here at gardendesk.com! I hope you'll come back and follow along with me!
Happy Gardening!
- Marc
Welcome back! I think gardening is like housework. It's never really done, and if you stop doing it.......
I found myself in a similar situation this spring. We left the garden to itself late last summer and the weeds never really stopped growing over the winter. I'm slowly getting it back in shape, but a lot of the spring planting just didn't happen. I just planted my tomatoes early this week and am going back out to plant some of the peppers in a few minutes.
I haven't been a visitor here in quite a while, but I've been thinking about your garden desk while I work in the garden and decided to check in.
Posted by: Entangled Tangledbranches | June 15, 2012 at 03:25 PM