This past weekend we had some of the most beautiful autumn weather. Sunny and mid-seventies. I’ve always thought that the first weekend of November is the most beautiful in Sonoma, well in all of wine country, and this year did not disappoint. We, as a family, worked outside together both Saturday and Sunday on a new project.
If you’ve been reading here for a few months, maybe even a few years, you might have noticed that we’ve grown a little discouraged with vegetable gardening. What once used to come so easy to us, has become difficult and discouraging. Things weren’t growing as well as we knew how to grow them. We were encountering more rodent/bird/bug/fuzzy bunny foes than we ever had before. The twinkle we had in our eyes about growing our food had become dull. We needed to change things up. To start fresh. To improve our situation.
So on Saturday Scott and our oldest son set out to turn our old deck into new raised beds. When the two of them ripped apart the old deck they saved as much of the 2×6 boards as they could. It turned out that we saved just enough to build ourselves a new garden. Over the course of two days they built six 5’x3′ raised planter boxes and lined their bottoms with gopher wire. Yesterday, Monday, Scott used his time away from the computer desk to place them all in the ground in mostly straight lines, he ordered 5 yards of potting soil, and as the sun was setting we were filling them up.
One thing I’ve always admired about my husband is that he has it in him to take a faint idea of ours and see it to completion almost immediately. Between his work ethic and his need for things to be finished, complete and sound, he will work tirelessly until the project is completely done. We still have irrigation to put in, landscape fabric to put down between the beds and wood chips to spread on top. Yet all ready this section of garden has new life for us and has given us a new sense of possibility and excitement. We’ve made a lot of changes to this house over the last few years but they’ve been big jobs that have needed professional contractors. They’ve been fun to watch happen, but it’s not easy to see how many loads of dump materials we’ve created in the process or how many deliveries of new wood we’ve had delivered. It takes a lot of natural resources to rehab a house. And we didn’t physically make them ourselves which always lessens the pride you take in them. This project however, from old wood we’ve rescued, that we built with all our hands, to solve a problem that needed fixing, this feels good and revitalizing.
This next gardening year? It’s going to be a great one.
Those look fabulous! I love reclaiming stuff, and the rustic look is wonderful! Love the photos, btw. I went to Sonoma State many moons ago and I miss the hills there!
The fun/satisfaction/rewards in gardening has faded considerably here in central Texas. The extreme heat, extreme drought, and extreme insect pests have all conspired to require extreme efforts but produce such diminishing returns that at our age, (70 ish), we’ve begun to think the unthinkable: stop. Which is sad, given our investment in over 10K gallons of rain catching tanks and connected irrigation to all our raised and flat garden beds. I consider my husband a Master Gardener; he’s spent years removing rocks and augmenting the soil with rich, organic material, but things have changed so horribly over the last 5 years or so that nothing seems to help. The spider mites alone are enough to make us weep! Next spring, which now starts around February in these parts, I’m going to apply gallons of “worm tea” from the day the first sprouts appear, and if that doesn’t work, then we may abandon our rather extensive gardens. I wish you luck on your latest efforts!
You poor things! Have you tried buying a tub of ladybugs for the spider mite? We had great success with that and year on year had a lovely marching red and black army.
Thanks for your comment Beth. I can relate to your frusteration. We used to be so proud of our gardening efforts and now we’re so deflated. I’m hoping that going back to raised beds will help. Your rain catchment system sounds incredible. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you that this next growing year is a good one for you too.
Wow- an hour away and we just got rained on loads last weekend!
Your deep beds look perfect. We had reclaimed wood beds exactly the same design 6 x 4 in the UK that lasted about 8 years! I guess with the dryer climate over here yours could last far far longer. They grow the best root veg ever! Our parsnips were always enormous from the deep beds but brassicas didn’t like it for whatever reason.
Hi sweetlittlewood, yes we only got rain on Friday morning and that was it. We’ll see how long these boards will last. They are already 40 years old, but we’re hoping to get at least a handful of years left from them.