February 2013

Dean was quite busy in our garden during the month of February, while I spent most of my time working (at both school and Lowe's), helping Mom and working on our seedlings. We started some of our seedling around the 11th of January and planted more on the 4th of February. My goal this year is to start everything in our garden from seed, especially after the disaster which occurred last year after I bought the Lemon Boy tomato plant home- the eventual destruction of all of my tomato plants.

This photo shows all of our seedlings on the 15th of February:

Background plants were planted in January (around the 11th), the foreground plants were planted on February 4th.

Planted in January.

Dean, along with some assistance from Joseph and Anthony, spent this month working on the expansion of our garden beds by adding two 4'x12', four 2'x8' and two 2'x6' beds, making our garden 360 square feet total. He also added the drip irrigation system we ordered from Drip Works, burying the 1/2" tubing and creating 3 watering zones. We eventually hope to put his citrus trees on a timed drip irrigation system.

While expanding the garden we added a gate on the north side, moved the garden shed to the east side of the house along with the 2 compost bins, and relocated the dog's water. He also repurposed the old soccer goal into a covered shed for things like our pipe and 5 gallon buckets.

Our garden area before the transformation. Photo taken the end of September.

The two 16' beds in the foreground, the three 12' beds beyond. To the far right you can see one of the 8' beds which run along the entire fence line. This photo was taken March 16, 2013.

The 8' beds and the corners of the two 6' beds. You can see the white pvc covering the 1/2" supply tubing which is run underground. The pvc is to protect the tubing from the weed eater.

Shaded garden from the east view.

Here you can see the garden shed, two compost bins and covered area Dean made from an old soccer goal. You can also see the double gate he made on this side of the garden.

This garden wouldn't look anything like this if it hadn't been for Dean. On January 25th, my 81 year-old mother fell in the garden center of Lowe's and broke the 2 bones in her wrist. The first few weeks following that accident, every spare moment I had was at her house helping her with basic living activities: bathing, washing hair, writing out checks to pay bills, etc. She was very determined to do everything she could for herself, so by the end of February (after the finally put her in a regular cast on February 18th) she was doing most of this for herself so I could help in the garden a little more.