Saturday, May 18th
The beds are in really bad shape this year. They are overgrown with prickers, mint and chives. Mint and chives are very aggressive. The paving stones are faded and the bed frames are decaying. The only saving grace is the asparagus bed is doing great and of course there is a ton of mint (Mojitos).
We ask ourselves the same question every spring. Do we weed and fix up the vegetable beds or rip them out and be done with it? Once again we decided we would throw some more time and money in to the vegetable garden. This is our 7th year.
Every year we try to figure out how to make preparing the beds for the season and day to day upkeep less painful.
Rob put cardboard over the beds one winter which did help cut down on the weeds in the spring but the cardboard kept blowing away in bad weather.
This year the plan is to put cement between the pavers to help prevent weeds from growing in between. We are also going to use weed cloth to prevent weeds in the beds.
Staining the Paving Stones
The first step was to move all the paving stones on to plastic so they could be power washed and stained. We also pulled the weeds that were growing between the paving stones.
The paving stones pulled and out and power washed.
Sunday, May 19th
Staining and Resetting the Paving Stones
The next day we started the staining process. The first step was brushing on the Cajun Rose concrete dye. Second step was spraying on the Golden West dye. The combination of the two was supposed to make a Copper Canyon color.
The first coat of stain was very red but looked so much better than the faded stones. The second step was to spray a yellowish stain to break up the red.
Rob began the process of putting the pavers back. We had thought about putting the pavers in cement but we decided to just put cement in-between the pavers. We are just hoping to prevent weeds from growing between.
The cement was a lot more gravely than we wanted. It was hard to get in-between the paving stones.
Friday, May 24th
Weeding and Planting
Rob got two of the beds wedded, tilled and covered with weed cloth. We planted the peppers and tomatoes.
Sunday, May 26th
Today Tegan helped us put deer fencing around the one set of beds. We really like this lightweight mesh that is pretty much invisible, thanks for the suggestion Jen!
Friday, May 31st
Yesterday and today we finished pulling out the mint and planting the lettuce and squash.
Monday, June 3rd
Today I put out dog and cat food cans filled with beer for what we call the “Roly-Poly Beer Party”. Several years in a row the stems on our squash plants would look like they were rotting and the plants would die. Also, our marigolds were getting eaten up. At first we thought the issue was too much water or a mold but we finally figured out it was Roly-Polies (also known as Pill bug or Armadillidiidae) eating the stems which then caused it to rot and the plant to die.
We found a tip online to put beer in cans and bury them so the tops were at soil level. This has worked great and we caught a ton of Roly-Polys. Our squash has done great since.
Tuesday, June 4th
I made some shades for the lettuce plants. We are trying to prevent bolting.
Garden On!
