All in a day's work

On a beautiful, but chilly Sunday morning I set out to attend to my garden for the first time since my move in November. Here is where I started:

Taken from my 2nd floor

Everything looked pretty dreary but, I set off to buy some compost and start on my tasks.

I decided to try a new method of sectioning off each square foot. Instead of the lath boards (which I used for my first two seasons, and is suggested in the SFG book) I wanted to try string for the following reasons:

1. The condition of my two-season boards was pretty poor, so I didn't think they were worth moving (I gave them to a fellow gardener to use).
2. Each lath boards was an inch wide, so they made the planting area within each square foot smaller (every inch counts!)
3. When moving/adding soil it was sometimes challenging to spread it out between the squares.
   

There honestly are probably many easier ways of going about laying out the grid. However, I decided to use 1/2" screw eyes & polypropylene string.

It was pretty time consuming and I had a minor setback when I broke my itsy-bitsy drill bit that I was using to start the 12 holes for the screw eyes, but...

Ta da! My backyard garden set up is complete and ready to go.

warm weather...I am waiting!

Event: Gardeners Gathering

It is time once again for the...

36th BNAN Annual Gardeners Gathering
Saturday, March 26th
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Curry Student Center
Northeastern University, Boston
Free, walk-in registration

Kick off the gardening season by joining over 300 community and residential gardeners for plenary sessions, workshops, community gardener awards, information gallery, door prizes, and much more. Click here for more information INCLUDING WORKSHOP SCHEDULE.

At noon Mayor Menino will welcome the gardeners and present this year's community gardener awards. Be sure to be there! Bring your gardening friends, free event, all are welcome.

I have attended this event for the past two years and always have learned lots of tips and techniques. I am excited to attend the sessions about canning, composting and bee keeping!

2010 Harvest Recap

2010 was a incredible gardening year due to a variety of things...being established in my community plot and being able to start planting earlier than 2009 made a big difference. Also, having an increased knowledge of gardening and terrific growing weather helped as well.

Another Year...Same Thing...DIFFERENT VENUE

Surprise! I have gone from community gardener to backyard gardener!

Last fall, the change of season meant a little more than usual end of season tasks. I made a sad but exciting garden move from my large community plot in the Fenway Victory Gardens to a backyard in Cambridge, MA where I now reside. Leaving Boston was difficult, but leaving the FVG was really tough. It is where I started gardening, and I spent so much of my time in the past two years tending to my plot & chatting with other gardeners. I still hope to stay connected to FVG by becoming a friend and helping with monthly park clean ups.

I am excited to experience the convenience of my new backyard garden and the new learning opportunities it will provide. The snow finally disappeared last week after over 3 months of snow cover, so now I have a lot of work to do:

• add more of 'Mel's mix'
• put up a trellis on two of the boxes
• re-outline each square foot (with string this time)
• order/buy seeds
• decide what to grow this year
• and...plant peas!!

So, I am officially back from blogging hiatus, and hope that you will follow me on my new gardening adventure. Happy Spring.