CLEANING UP FOR SPRING GARDEN

Saturday was the day for cleaning up the garden.  I've spent most of the Winter weekends building and setting up the raised beds behind the house for the fruit trees.  It's almost time to plant for Spring so I needed to focus on that.

 Here's an example...this is the herb bed, leftover oregano and lemon thyme going wild but most of the rest that were there had already been pulled up.  There was also some grass sneaking in around the bottom of a few of the raised beds, including this one.  

 Most of the others just had a few weeds growing.  The straw mulch did an AMAZING job of keeping the weeds down.  Loved it.  And it had begun decomposing into the soil below which was a great help as well.  

I added fresh compost...and then turned it all with a shovel.

That was to get it all mixed up.  Oh, the chives in the corner have been there for three seasons now.  They are definitely a perennial!

This was the long bed that had the tomatoes and jalapeño in it last Summer.  Not too many weeds and what there were just pulled up easily, thanks again to the straw mulch.

 Got them all pulled up and worked the compost into the existing soil here too.

I also added another bag of raised bed soil to top it all off and account for settling that naturally occurs over the year.

Raised bed garden left side

Here is the left side of the garden, all weeds pulled up from everywhere and the soil is all worked and turned and enhanced and ready for planting.  This is where we will plant for Spring and Summer.  Last Fall, we opened up a fifth bed for the garlic (you can see it in the back row).  

That leaves two more for filling this year.  We're going to save them for Summer gardening, a squash bed and okra again.  

Raised bed garden right side

Here is the right side of the garden.  I pulled the covers back on these, fluffed the soil and covered them back up.  It will be next year before we start venturing over to this side for planting as we're still seeing how we do with the ones on the other side. Plus I need to get a good irrigation plan going, more substantial than what we have now but we'll see how that happens in time...

Now we're planning the plants and seeds to plant soon.  Mid March is about the time here for all Spring plants to start going in.