The transformation in the vegetable garden!

I was thrilled to step into my backyard last weekend to see this! Welcome to the newly mulched vegetable garden.

Morning glories are on their way up this arbor.

It looks even better than I imagined. Weeds all gone (I only wish the gopher was gone too, grrr).  I can now see lots more room for expanding those raised beds one day. The mulch will hold us over until we 'live' with the layout for a year and decide how to redesign it, if we even do. At the moment, we've got our hands full with the rest of the house as well.

A little seating area would be perfect right here.

 I spent the entire weekend going over the existing irrigation, updating and expanding it. I also mulched and netted the strawberry bed to keep those sweet birds off my food. I planted a first flush of pole bean seeds in their own bed. They'll be kept company with some love lies bleeding and calendula flowers tucked into the corners.

Kentucky Wonder beans on the outside and Purple Podded in the center.

The rest of the garden is filling in fast as well. The irises are in full bloom now. Not my first pick of flower colors but at least there's something. Beyond the irises is the vegetable garden area with broccoli, garlic and english peas reaching high.

Speaking of growing. I think we're more than set with chard plants. In addition to these babies I salvaged from the existing garden last year, my daughter's raised bed has twelve more that are almost ready for harvesting. Good thing we love chard!

And as if I didn't have enough raised beds, I built another one this month. This one will hold a lot of herbs. I plan to keep a fair amount of herbs in the main garden as well as natural pest deterrents but needed an extra spot for my tea herbs and those cuttings you need in a quick pinch when you're in the middle of cooking. The herb bed is located between our outdoor patio and covered porch.

We built the bed with cedar boards and plan to add a seating lip around it for parties. I can't tell you how many wheelbarrows or compost and soil it took to fill it. My back knows. The bed is filled with two determinate cherry tomatoes, chives, lemon balm, tarragon, savory, chamomile, four mints (in their own pots), thyme and allyssum. We also planted scarlet runner beans and perpetual spinach to climb up the trellis and block out some of the fierce afternoon sun.

And last but not least, the fruit is coming! These are cherry plums above that the previous owners used to make jam. Check out my flikr page to see all the other fruits developing in the garden. This weekend will be all about preparing the last two raised beds for melons plus some more inter and succession planting. It's settling down finally!

The anticipation is killing me ...

I'm heading up to Sonoma this morning to see what progress (if any) has been made on the giant mulch job of the garden paths. See all those weeds? They grew even higher after this picture was taken in March.

The gardeners said they would lay down mulch sometime last week. Fingers crossed they actually did it. If so, I'll have some incredible transformation photos to share. I'll spend all weekend redoing the battered irrigation lines that run all over the place. We've been hard at work ourselves in another part of the yard, building yet another raised bed, this one for herbs that will be located closer to the back door.

See that flat patch in front of the lattice? It's now much higher off the ground. My husband built an amazing contraption that I'll be busy filling in with loads and loads and loads of compost this weekend (my back is already crying). The bed will be 3'x8', lots of plants to slip in the soil this weekend as well. And just maybe I'll have a few moments of this too.

Maybe I'll have a little time to do some of this as well. It will have to be iced though, it's supposed to be 85 this weekend!

The overall plan and signs of real spring

I've finally been able to sketch out an overall layout of the garden. It's wonky, it's in photoshop (which I have a love/hate relationship with), but it's done. Considering my San Francisco backyard contained just one little 4'x6' bed, this is quite a shift. The largest bed is 15' in length to give an idea of scale.

Fruit trees surround the raised bed garden area but there are more fruit trees around the rest of the property. This is only about 1/4th the area of the yard shown. It looks all neat and tidy on the plan but I don't do something soon, the weeds were going to over and I won't be able to find these raised beds. Here's the last of the beds I haven't tackled yet and the weeds surrounding.

I called in my gardener for a quote to till the weeds and lay down landscape fabric and then mulch or gravel over top. I usually won't allow the gardener in my bed area, that's my domain, but this was becoming a crisis. If I were here full time, I could tackle it myself. I might have to still if that quote comes in high. I dread that, sigh.

In the meantime, I had some nice little surprises over the weekend. The first fig leaves are popping out.

And the tulips under the apple trees bloomed!

They are as beautiful as the previous owner, Kendra, told me they would be. I had to cut them so we could enjoy them this week back in the city. And see all that green behind those tulips ... weeds, weeds, weeds. sigh.

March in the garden

We have been coming up Saturday mornings lately. I try to already have everything I need to make dinner so the only shopping I have to do is in the garden. This week I was able to harvest my usual pile of chard and the first spinach and lettuce leaves to make a side salad.

The weather has been so mild these past few weeks we've been taking afternoon bike rides throughout Sonoma. A few blocks away from the cottage we have this view to enjoy. There's a wonderful spot nearby to set out our picnic blanket which we plan to do a lot of this year.

Back in the garden, things are turning green, especially the weeds in between the beds. I'm debating what to do about the surrounding paths.

On the one hand, if you follow the concepts around permaculture, this is a vital part of the garden, providing shelter for good bugs (but also bad). The downside is the paths are uneven, you have to hand trim the paths because of the irrigation lines, and it just doesn't look very tidy to me.

I'm looking into mulching the paths, not sure if I'll go forward with it. In the meantime, I'm slowly removing an old straw bale bed to make way for a seating area with a fire pit between the beds.

In the midst of all these thoughts, though, the plants are growing well. Radishes sprouted last week, the snap peas have their first flowers and my flowers seeds (nigella) are growing fast.