Looking Ahead Week: The Garden

When I moved into my house in August, the garden was lush with vegetation.  The problem, though, was that this vegetation was growing out of control.  The near end of the garden, especially, was a thick growth dominated by thorny raspberry plants.  Before I could plant anything in the garden this year, I had to clear out the raspberries, the weeds, and their roots and underground runners.  Although the thickest growth was at the near end of the garden, the far end had plenty of vegetation to clear as well:

After a few hours of work, the fringe of the garden was clear, and a couple of shrubs or short trees were revealed:

And after several more hours of work, the garden was cleared of most of those annoying plants.  It wasn't anywhere near ready for planting, but it was slowly getting there:

Since I'm still learning the ropes of gardening, and since there's lots of space in the garden, I'm planning to plant the garden in stages.   There are two long planter rows that run nearly the full length of the garden: these are my objective for this year.

I cleared out the plants (mostly grass and small weeds) late in the fall, and I plan to fill one with flowers and one with vegetables after temperatures have warmed up later this spring.  I have a mixture of full-sun and shade flowers to try out this year, and we'll see which grow the best in the part-sun, part-shade environment of the garden.  I've also bought some carrots and green beans - vegetables that I actually eat - to try out in the garden.  I plan to start them indoors and hope that they sprout and get a good start before I transplant them to the garden.  The seedlings will be easier to manage that way.

As for the rest of the garden - well, I think I have enough on my hands for now, between the two garden planter boxes, the wildflower area, cleaning up the branches and junk from the yard, and still leaving some time to enjoy my spring and summer.  In the coming weeks, I look forward to seeing the snow melt, the grass grow, the wildflowers pop up, the leaves turn the trees green, and all of the annual wonders of spring.