Dig-it!

Once the placement for the garden was set the real fun began, the digging...

Fortunately I had just cleared the area for the chicken run and coup so I was in the digging mood so to speak. First I cleared the grass and filled in an area next to the garden to hopefully divert the water that had been running down that side of the property and through the area for the garden and coup. I added a drainage ditch as well.



Next the 2”x12” sides went in the ground. The idea behind this was again to increase the barriers to a river running through the garden and chickens as well as barriers to pests that could potentially eat our forthcoming goodies.


With the raised planter bed of the garden now lag bolted together the only things left to do before the plants go in the ground and start growing us food is to wait for the winter to leave us (we have still been getting some freezing nights), fill in the raised bed with good fill dirt (Craigslist, is helpful, but when it is raining people don’t advertise free dirt really, maybe I should search for free mud…), and start the seeds indoors until they can be transplanted.
View looking north of our yard. Drainage rock and chicken run on far left, small compost area next to it. Garden shed where our lawn mower and yard tools live, crappy left over lawn furniture to the right of that and finally the garden on the far right.


found many a thing while i dug up and aerated the soil of the garden, rocks, glass, marbles, a box cutter and this little gem. Why is mickey only wearing tighty whities?

Planning a garden

We decided a while ago that there needed to be some things growing around here. That is to say more than just the grass, bamboo and moss in our backyard. So where oh where to begin? Well I am new round these parts so I didn’t really know much about the growing season, daylight hours or sun during the day so I began with some research. I began on the internet but came up underwhelmed with the complete lack of information. Perhaps I was just asking the wrong questions, but I prefer to think that the people out there planting gardens are not the computer savvy ones in the world so I decided to use an older source that I have often turn to and read, fantasizing about someday, The Solar Greenhouse. The book is actually one year older than I am, and like me it is still useful in this world. From its pages I was able to understand the hours of sunlight, the exact location of sunrise and sunset using my latitude, and also the angle of incline. Of course as we all know this changes daily as the earth orbits the sun as well as rotates itself (and now those wacky NASA scientists say that all these major earthquakes are altering the rotation of earth as well so we have to factor that in too). But roughly, on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, the sun will rise at a compass heading of 65’ and set at 295’ with the max incline of the sun reaching 60’ from the surface of the earth.

With that done I decided to take a look in the yard and find the best possible place to have a garden. The only problem, all our neighbors have trees. And not small ones either, really big ones. The foliage is definitely big enough to obscure the sun for many hours a day. So my best option was to place the garden on the north side of our property and hope for the best as our days get warmer and longer. I marked out a 8’x12’ patch for the garden with room next to it for plants that need to stretch like squash. I also decided to dedicate some room on the south side of our property of flowers, peas, tomatoes and whatever else will fit. So there we have it a 96 sq/ft planter and various other spots that can be utilized around the yard.

south fence of our backyard




Bob enjoying some outside time.



The future location of our garden

Saturday yard workin' it

Last weekend was a fairly nice one here in Seattle so I decided it was time to get some Saturday yard work done. the garden was dug, the seeds started and now the lawn needed my attention. armed with only the simplest of knowledge of mowing lawns I decided a stiff greyhound would give me the necessary courage to tackle our back yard. sure enough, about an hour later the job was done and it even inspired the folks we share our house with to cut the front lawn on Sunday.



"K" rockin' out inside while I slave away in the yard with only my trusty hound to keep me company.