Waiting for the Dirt

Things are finally moving along with the garden. We’ve finished up construction of the raised beds (there are now four 4-foot by 11-foot beds and four 2-foot by 11-foot) and got the gravel filled into the side paths. It’s really coming together now.

Finished garden beds

The real work will take place this weekend. The garden soil is scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. I expect it will take many hours and countless wheelbarrow loads to fill the beds with soil, peat moss, compost, and maple leaf mulch from last fall. I’m no stranger to a shovel but I know this is going to be a lot of work. I already warned my coworkers that I will probably be useless on Monday!

Raised beds waiting for soil

Once the soil is in place, I’m ready to plant. After quite a bit of consultation of gardening books, arranging, erasing and rearranging, I think I’ve finally come up with a layout for the garden. I have most of the seeds I want to plant and will be purchasing plants like tomatoes and peppers. I didn’t start any seeds early but I’ll probably try it next year. A majority of the seeds are left over from the small “surrogate” gardens I planted last year. With no space of my own, I worked garden beds at the museum at which I work and at my in-laws’ home. I’m really looking forward to having a nice, big garden of my own with all sorts of vegetables and herbs again.

Plotting and planning on my living room floor

The "final" garden plan

Once the garden beds are all filled and set, we’re going to have to get the fence in place. Last night, we watched two deer wander around our backyard. They are probably the young ones we saw when we first moved here. They are so used to life in the suburbs that they have very little fear of people. They’ve already nipped off some of the daylily leaves right next to my back porch as well as the newly sprouted hostas in front of the house. I fear it’s going to be a long battle against the deer. They are quite nice to watch, though. We’ve also been having a good time watching the rabbit that has been spending its evenings in our back yard. 

Bunny!

Dividing the Lilies

Finally, a nice spring weekend! After snow on Easter Sunday, I was beginning to think that I would never get my hands into the soil. But this past weekend was gorgeous. I was even able to hang some sheets and towels out on the clothesline for the first time this year. On Saturday, I had the chance to split up some daylilies by our back porch. We have two nice, large plants that were just starting to send up shoots. I decided it would be nice to spread them out along the entire length of the porch.

Before – those bushes needed to go

I have never been much of a flower gardener but I do know that daylilies are almost indestructible. This made for a fairly quick and easy project. I did Google when and how to split up daylilies just to make sure I had the right idea of what I was doing. Here's how it went:

Daylilies ready to be divided

Step 1: Dig them up

I took a shovel and dug all the way around the plants until each came up as a single clump.

Step 2: Split them up

I then drove the shovel down through the plants and split them into several large chunks. (Instructions I read said to split them into 6-8” pieces. I just split them up however looked right.)

What a lovely chunk of plant!

Step 3: Dig more holes

I wanted to put in a full row of the lilies along my porch so I dug holes in a relatively straight line. (Keeping the plants about 12” apart was recommended. Again, I just did what looked right.)

Step 4: Put them in the holes

I put a chunk of lily (very technical, I know) into each hole root side down, obviously, and filled in around it with dirt. I packed the dirt down firmly by hand. Then I moved onto the next hole and did the same. I did not feel the need to water the transplants in as it had been raining just days before and the soil was still pretty moist.

After – the line of new transplants

Step 5: Stand back, admire your work and hope for the best

In about half an hour or so, the two daylily plants magically became twelve. I’m really looking forward to watching them grow.

Three days later and still looking good

Oh, and by the way, some of the mystery bulbs are indeed daffodils.

First blossom of the spring!