Before and After
July 16/2010 and August 22/2010: Welcome to Lynda's garden! We met through a mutual friend - she has garden space and I have plants and time, so it was an instant friendship. This is the main area behind her house, which gets lots of sun during the day. The plot was covered in ivy and grass, with two apple trees at the centre. We kept the apple trees, as well as some comfrey, hollyhocks and poppies.
July and August 2010
July 16/2010: As I mentioned... the plot was covered in ivy and grass and weeds. Lots of buttercups - my long time enemy!
July 16/2010: The ivy had grown over into the area under the deck. Many of the vines had rooted solidly into the gravel making them difficult to remove.
July 16/2010: It took the two of us about four hours to rip out all the ivy! Lynda's cat Frisk (in the centre) was very curious about the whole process.
July 16/2010: Much better without all the ivy.
July 20/2010: Began digging.
July 20/2010: I spent several hours sifitng rocks and weeds out of the dirt, then brought over a large sage bush (Salvia officinalis). This was a sage that we had purchased in April 2007 - it grew to monster proportions, and I've already taken several divisions from it. I put it in this location because it won't grow very tall, and will allow the light to still reach this area under the deck.
August 06/2010: I made a sketch of Lynda's garden, for planning where all the transplants will go. The plot is about 140 square feet, or 13 square metres, not including the spot with the apple trees.
August 07/2010: It's raining, so I spent the day inside playing with garden maps.
I tried to keep the water-loving plants (berries, chives, parsley) on one side of the garden, separate from the herbs which prefer dry conditions. Most of the herbs want poor, well-drained soil, especially the thymes and the savoury. The lavender wants rich soil, so I have it at the edge, near the "wet" section.
Other considerations...
The rosemary wants some shelter, so it's beside the apple tree.
There are 6 different thymes (regular, lemon, golden, silver, orange balsam, and pensylvannia dutch tea thyme) and they shouldn't be planted next to each other or the flavours will merge and taste funny. Likewise 5 different sages - regular, golden, purple, tri-colour, and alpine. Marjoram and oregano are also sisters and should be kept apart. It's like an organic form of Sudoku.
The "seasonal" areas will be for veggies like onions, kale, rutabagas, beans, etc. I kept these sections away from the apple trees so we won't have to disturb the tree roots when we harvest.
I'm going to have to take these designs down to the actual garden to decide which one is best. I think the key will be which path is nicest to walk.
August 13/2010: 11am. Over the past few days we dug out the southern edge of the garden, and added some edging stones.
August 13/2010: 4pm. More digging has been done, but still more to go. Frisk is relaxing on the sidewalk - apparently she likes to lay on top of the dirt mound when I'm not around.
August 15/2010: More digging. I'm getting ready for this part to be over. The blue rubber-gloves are on bamboo stakes so that they will dry inside and out.
August 20/2010: Another day of digging.
August 20/2010: As I sift through the dirt, I use three buckets to collect weeds, rocks and garbage. Weeds go into the weed pile, and we're saving all the rocks to use in the garden path later. Garbage, in this case, consists mostly of plastic and rusty bits of metal. I've also found 7 marbles, which went into my personal collection :)
August 22/2010: 10am - I am determined that this will be the last day of digging.
August 22/2010: 2:45pm - finished the digging!
August 22/2010: 3:30pm - finished leveling out the dirt, which was a bigger workout than I'd expected. In the background, in front of the birdbath, you can sort of see: the large black planter is brimming with stones. These are all the stones we took out of the dirt.
August 22/2010: Raked/shoveled in the main path, created the raised beds, added some mushroom manure, and then dumped all the extra rocks into the path for better drainage. We decided to go with the 4th garden plan, with an s-shaped path beginning at the sidewalk.