Dreaming of an organized garden...

This is the time of year when I am filled with good intentions.  The snow has all melted away for the second time.  The sun has returned.  I cannot plant much of anything for 6-7 weeks, but I can dream.

I dream of neat rows of plants.  There are bright red tomatoes hiding in the leaves. Basil plants look like bushes.  Pumpkins the size of beach balls are waiting to turn orange.  There are no weeds in my dreams.

The farmer rototills the garden for me on Mothers Day.  He hates doing it, but he will do it for me as a Mother's day gift.  I spend a few glorious days playing in the dirt.  Then we wait.  And wait.  I mulch.  I weed. I mulch some more.  I do pretty well until about mid to late July but then invariably something happens and I get behind.  The weeds explode.  It's all over.  Sometimes I launch a counter attack, but by early August I admit defeat.  I was too embarrassed last year to post a picture.  You could not see the paths between the beds.  There were pumpkins out there but we needed a machete to hack the way to them.  Well, not quite, but it is  still the stuff of gardener nightmares.

 

Each year we do one thing to upgrade the landscaping.  Last year it was apple trees.  This year it is raised beds.  I have spent the last 3 weeks looking at every conceivable I method for purchasing or constructing raised beds.  Finally, we made a decision and went with cedar bed kits from the folks at Natural Yards.  The garden is 25'x17', so we bought 4 beds.  Each one is: 3'x12'x11".  It is an investment.  Raised beds are supposed to be wonderful in increasing crop yields, allowing the soil to warm faster, and make the garden easier to maintain.  Best of all the farmer will no longer need to use rototiller.   I am hoping it all will be worth it.  I can dream, right?

Right?