Rebuild Time Part 2

Last spring, we replaced half of the old wooden beds in our garden with metal ones. This year, we finished the job. There were still two 4-foot by 11-foot and two 1-foot by 11-foot wooden bed to replace. One of the smaller beds was filled with asparagus, which we relocated outside the garden. Part of the other smaller bed had horseradish, which we pulled out and deposited along the back treeline. After that, there was just a lot of dirt moving to do.

Garden bed rebuild in progress.

It has been a very wet spring. Because of that, and my lack of enthusiasm for hard work, the rebuild took several weeks to finish. My husband really did most of it. He built the six new metal beds, shoveled tons of dirt, added compost, and relaid the stone paths. I helped by decided which type and how many bags of new soil we would get to fill in and I added those bags to the beds. And finally, it was all done.

All the bed replacements finally finished!

But that was not all of the rebuild. For the past couple of years, the deer have been making themselves at home in the garden. Beyond the nibbled plants and obvious hoof prints, we got photographic proof last fall.

A taller fence was obviously needed. Our original fence was four feet tall. We got a couple more rolls of 4-foot wide plastic mesh fencing and 6-foot long bamboo poles for fence posts. The process of adding height to the existing fence actually went more smoothly than I expected. I had a plan, of course, but was still surprised that the plan worked so well. We wove the bamboo poles through the mesh fencing then lifted them up and zip-tied them to the fence posts that were already there. Then I went around and hand "sewed" the seam between the two fences so there wasn't a gap.

"Sewing" the fence seam together with some garden twine.

The result is an 8-foot tall fence all the way around our garden (except for over the gate).

Let's see those deer jump over this! (I know they could so please don't.)

With the garden now better protected, I got the rest of the seeds and plants into the ground. I had planted the hardier seeds - radishes, arugula, pak choi, chard, and peas - and the direct-sew tomato seeds (as directed) before the average last frost date and before we finished the fence. 

A lovely row of sugar snap peas.

After the fence I planted the bush beans, turtle beans, rattlesnake beans, blue Jarrahdale pumpkins, and glass gem ornamental corn. I also transplanted pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber plants.

The young plants hardening off a few days before transplanting.

The spring rains continued and I mostly stayed out of the garden. Yesterday, I finally thinned out the seedlings. I also added a fence for the peas. Everything is growing, though much of it is unhappy with the large amount of rain. 

Corn and radishes before thinning.

This poor little cucumber plant isn't well.

One other thing we planted outside the garden was some luffa plants. We had very good luck growing them a few years ago. We still had some seed left and they were still viable, so now there's a tall teepee in the back yard near the new asparagus bed. There is also one long pie pumpkin plant under the teepee. 

I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the whole teepee.

You grow, luffa!

So far, the pumpkin and luffa plants have been left alone by our backyard wildlife. We'll see if that lasts. 

Oh deer, oh deer.

A sweet, fluffy bunny.

 

That Time We Moved the Asparagus Bed

Last spring, we rebuilt half of the garden by taking out the old wooden raised beds and replacing them with metal ones. This spring, we replaced the other half. I'll be posting about that soon. Moving the tons of dirt from the old beds into the new ones was a lot of work, but the real chore, in my opinion, was digging out the asparagus bed. 

The "old" asparagus bed behind the Three Sisters bed.

Back in March, I tried to get the process started by digging up the asparagus while it was still dormant. At that time, I found that the ground was still frozen, so I couldn't do any digging. At least, that's what I thought. The ground certain still had some ice in it, but when I went back to try again after it had warmed up considerably, I still found it very hard to dig. 

Over the winter, I had researched how to relocate an asparagus bed. I read that it was a delicate process to remove the fragile roots and crowns and that I needed to be gentle with them. With that in mind, I carefully began the extraction. The gentle approach got me nowhere. I could barely get the tines of my garden fork into the earth. So, I got out a shovel and began to tentative probe the soil to loosen it around roots. When my husband found me jumping on the shovel like a pogo stick he suggested getting out an ax. I chuckled and allowed him to take over for a bit. Finally, he was able to remove an asparagus crown.

You've heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster...

One of the first things we planted in our brand-new garden some 10 years was the asparagus bed. I guess after that long, the tiny, delicate asparagus crowns had turned to hulking beasts. That would explain the difficulty digging and maybe why some of the asparagus spears last year were somewhat malformed. I assumed that had been insects but it might have been the result of intense overcrowding.

It ended up taking more than a month to fully remove all the asparagus from the old bed. I strained by back while working on it and my husband's attention was on moving soil to the new beds. By the time we had hauled all the bits of asparagus out of its 1-foot by 11-foot bed, I was, frankly, tired of it.

One of the newer 3'x6' beds temporarily held all the dug-up asparagus.

For a couple days, I considered just dumping the load at the back of our property and letting it fend for itself. But then I noticed the tiny green spears reaching out of the mass of twisted roots.

Life will find a way.

I couldn't just exile the asparagus when it was doing its best to keep going. So, I went to work digging a new, larger bed outside of the garden proper. The digging started out easily enough. Removing the first layer of turf was actually kind of fun. Then I got into the rocks. There were so many rocks. I have vowed that the next place we live will have soil free of rocks. By the time I get over the last move, however, and actually want to move again, I'll likely be too old to dig a hole anyway. 

That's going to have to be good enough.

After heaving the dug-up asparagus "crowns" over the garden fence rather than carrying them all the way out through the gate, I laid them into the hole. I probably should have used fewer of them or made a larger bed but I didn't have the heart or the energy to do either. 

Sorry, they're just going to have to figure it out.

I had to shake out the turf in order to recover enough soil to completely cover the asparagus in its new home but it all seemed to work out.

All done!

Now, almost a month later, the asparagus has put up new spears. There aren't a lot but it proves that at least some of them survived the violent, haphazard transplanting. 

Hey, maybe this will actually work!

You may notice in the photo that many of the spears appear to be broken off. They were bitten off, more likely. I didn't think that deer ate asparagus, but they do seem to like to sample nearly everything we try to grow around here. I've just decided to shrug and late nature take its course.

Was it only the fence keeping the deer from devastating our asparagus crop?