Greenhouse garden

This is a super long post that could have included only two photos labeled: before, and after. But it was *SO* much work over two months that I have a need to detail every step of the way as a means of self validation. Sorry. Not sorry.

I am spoiled at this new house in that I have multiple gardens. The whole back yard is a garden, pretty much, since it is filled with beautiful landscaping and flowers, but I have a couple places that we specifically envision for vegetables. The one I will talk about today I will call the Greenhouse Garden, because it’s the most garden-y looking, and it’s right in front of the greenhouse.

It’s been neglected for a long time, or maybe just for a year while the previous owners got their house ready to sell. Things had been planted when we moved in, but it was a disheveled mess of growing things. Pretty in its own way.

My brother, Ian, moved to the city of Walla Walla, Washington about the same time Pedro and I moved to Tigard. I am in love with that city’s most famous export: Walla Walla Sweet Onions, and have sought them out all my life. Unfortunately, Tigard’s grocery stores have apparently never heard of them, because for the first time ever, I can’t find Walla Walla Sweets. Ok, that was a long story that could have been shorter. The punchline is: Ian sent me a bunch of onion starts and that was the impetus I needed to begin cleaning up the garden this spring.

I liked the wood chips between rows and began trying to separate the rows of dirt from the wood chips. I found that an inch or two below the surface, weed fabric had been installed years ago. Rain and watering had caused clay in the soil to wash beneath and above the fabric, causing holes and heaps and ripples and wrinkling and folds.

In the photo above, the “before” is on the right, where you can’t even tell where the garden rows are supposed to be. It’s all mixed: dirt, wood chips, vegetables, and weeds. In the middle you see the chips pushed out of the way, the fabric exposed, the hard clay dirt of the mound. The “after” is on the left. Nice, straight row of dirt with a nice straight row of wood chips.

The job became labor intensive. I would push wood chips away from my work space down to a layer that was dirt and chips mixed. Then I would try my best to separate the dirt and chips by washing and sifting, putting chips I separated onto the pile of chips, and dirt in handfuls onto the dirt pile, until I got down to the fabric layer. Then I used my hand trowel and brute force to dig up the metal pins holding down the fabric. It was difficult, because the pins had all rusted into fat blobs beneath the dirt, and they did not at all want to be pulled up. But I got them out, broke off all the rust so I could pull them through the fabric. Then I pulled back the fabric away from the clay soil and scraped and pushed dirt to level it again, then I pinned the fabric down again. Then I put the cleaned wood chips back.

Then I scooted over to the next section and did it again. Each row took me 1-3 days because the work was so physically hard I had to do it slowly.

With the one row cleared, I planted all the onion starts, then I put in two bunches of kale that we bought. And, as I found lettuce popping up all over that row, left over from a previous year, I dug it up and replanted it near the kale. I planted seeds in what remained of the row.

In the photo above, I have started on the second row. You can see my old lady cat, Racecar, lounging in the shade in what it supposed to be the third row, but no dirt is visible, just wood chips and volunteer leeks from the year before. Next to Racecar is what appears to be thriving leeks, but they were not good to eat.

The next rows caused me hesitation, because the stuff growing there was tall and looked healthy. It was mostly onions and leeks that we couldn’t really use. The bulbs were ok, but tiny. A lot of space and work for a tiny bulb. The stalks were tough and reedy. Same with leeks. They had been growing for over a year, and simply not useable, so I pulled them out and gave them to the chickens.

You may notice a few random plants sticking up here and there, some rather wilted. These are volunteer sunflowers. These have been planted by the squirrels. Pedro and I enjoyed the look last Autumn, of random sunflowers growing tall all over the garden. See the photo again, at the top of the post. It’s really beautiful. We decided to try to save the sunflowers this year. So I have been digging up the healthiest sunflowers that were growing in the paths, and transplanting them to the dirt mounds. They are all alive, and not yet thriving, but I think they will recover by the end of the summer, and will re-create the look we remember from last year.

The problem with the next few rows were the strawberries. Strawberry plants had originated in row five, but had been happily spreading and now were thriving instead in rows four and six, and especially happy up against the wooden fence, surrounding the Pineapple Guava tree. We wanted to keep the strawberries, certainly, so that meant before I even began the exhausting row cleanup, I would first have to dig up all the strawberry plants. So I did. I dug about 50 plants and put them into buckets of water, then threw the rest to the chickens.

In the photo above, the strawberries have been removed, and my hardest work began. Pedro and I decided to use some old cinder blocks we found at the back of the property to build a raised bed for the strawberries. Hopefully this will keep them from traveling in the future, and will make it easier for us to cover them and keep the squirrels out.

We decided to make the raised bed wider, and thus wanted it all the way at the end, beside the chickens, to not disrupt the flow of rows more than we needed to. I began digging near the wood fence and the chicken fence, and then did some careful work around the fruit tree right there.

The poor pineapple guava (I had never heard of such a thing and had to look it up!) had its bottom branches half split when we moved in. They were lying twisted on the ground, kept alive by wisps of bark still intact. I gently pulled them back up and taped and tied branches to each other, and to the fence during the winter. The tree is still alive and is more compact and tree-shaped this spring. I am hoping that with time and vitamins and water, the tree will mend all its broken branches and I can remove the rope and tape.

In the photo above, I couldn’t make a perfect rectangle bed with the bricks because I wanted to leave space for the tree. You can see the green tape I used to try to put it back into a tree shape. I left all the weeds growing against the chicken fence, because they like to stick their necks through and eat them.

When the bricks completed the almost-rectangle, I then hauled wheelbarrow loads of dirt from a disassembled vegetable bed in another part of the yard (Oh yes, that’s another part of our garden story!) to fill it up. Then I replanted all the traumatized strawberries. They are likely done producing for this year, but we have high hopes for next spring.

With the final row finished, I turned around and worked on rows four and five again.

There’s only one more chapter to the story I want to get into. (I have a feeling there may be additional chapters that will arrive as pests discover that the garden is in use again. We had a vole for a couple days, that mysteriously disappeared. Also the cat has decided she likes the soft dirt for her own hygiene use – gah! And I think slugs are eating the sunflowers I replanted. More pests to come, I am sure.)

Anyway, the last bit can be filed under lessons learned. I have always liked using grass clippings from the lawn as mulch. It is an excellent weed barrier, vitamin infusion system, and moisture capture system. Turns out, it’s also irresistible to crows.

In the future, I will not tempt crows by using grass clippings anymore. But other than that, I’m eager to see how this garden turns out by the end of summer. And I’m eager to check on my little fruit tree and the strawberries next spring.

Also, you know what’s awesome? Next spring this gigantic chore will NOT be on my list, because it will already be cleaned up and beautiful and ready for plants.