January Projects

We've been very lucky so far this year. The weather has been dreamy, even balmy, at 61 degrees for a short stretch. As we love nothing more than spending time outside and as the project list is still a vital document in our household, Facilities Manager and I took advantage of our rare, warm January weather by tackling a couple to-dos.

 First up, paths: I love them. They give definition to the garden and make for logical places to traverse our property. They also link vital areas. Here, we are looking at the edge of the labyrinth garden and Himalayan mounds. This area is close to the vegetable garden, so I wanted to connect the two with a path. This is a "before" shot in November. Also, note the scraggly lilac on the far right.

 A few weeks ago I defined the path area by digging out the edges. We've have a lot of rain since then, so I hadn't worked on it any more, what with the heavy soil and all. The lilac, now without its leaves, received a good pruning last week. I considered taking it out all together, but I decided to wait until spring and see whether the haircut improved matters.

 The new path swoops down towards the gate to the vegetable garden. The tree in the center of the photograph is a dwarf fig tree, beckoning you towards the edible portion of our gardens.

Facilities Manager surprised me by not only digging out the rest of the path but on Monday morning visiting our local rock quarry to obtain big, chunky gravel for the bottom layer.

 FM dug down a generous six inches, a good thing since this field grass is quite aggressive. We want to keep the grass from encroaching on the path as much as is possible. As a bottom layer, FM also re-used landscape fabric that we found under six inches of sand in the former labyrinth when we first began working on the garden spring of 2016. As a rule I detest landscape fabric, but for areas where you really don't want anything to grow, like a path, it comes in handy, especially if it's free.

This is the connecting point of three major elements of the garden: the labyrinth garden, the Himalayan mounds to the left, and the new path leading to the vegetable garden. It needed some love.

 Here it is after FM dug it out and added chunky gravel. 

 We added quarter-ten crushed gravel as the top layer, we use it all over the garden and have a rather large pile in the driveway. I think we'll always have gravel hanging about, it comes in handy for so many tasks. Here, I've added three wheel-barrows full to the top of the path. I predict it will take 20 loads for the whole path.

 At this point I had added six loads of smaller gravel (top of path) atop chunky gravel (foreground). Normally I try to do more than that, but I had other projects in mind to work on. This can always wait another week or two when I'm in the mood for an upper body workout.

 What I want to do here is remove that triangle of grass and plant it up with a low shrub of some sort to soften the lines of this part of the garden. Another day.

This is what it looks like today. A major path through the labyrinth garden now continues on and connects two very different parts of the property.  UPDATE: FM added five barrows' full with his big barrow. Job done!

 This is what it looked like last weekend. Gravel and Facilities Manager are my best friends.

 To the gate! We realize it's a little silly to keep the gate here without a fence, but it's well-built and cemented into the ground. Plus, it looks cool so we leave it for ornamental purposes. The path that for now ends at the gate will continue on through it, to the edge of the fence in the distance. You can just make out the flags that mark where path will go.

The question now is how to build that path and of what materials. Gravel is expensive and that is at least 100 feet of path to build, no way we're digging out that much field grass and soil. It's uneven, so at the very least I would like to smooth it out. We are open to ideas and suggestions. Facilities Manager thinks we should leave it as grass for at least it won't be muddy. I agree, but long term, the unevenness is a hazard.

 Next up: Raspberries. Facilities Manager wanted to create a trellis to support our up-and-coming raspberry patch. He wanted to use branches from hazel trees on the property, so he designed this. We like the rustic look of the branches, but he did reinforce it with fence poles on either end and five others on the right side of the trellis.

 The plastic is in place to try to solarize the weeds in between before we put down a mulch. We have five plants here that won't be allowed to flop over with all that support.

 Lastly, our little raised-bed area needed some love. This photo is even after I weeded all around them, for the crimson clover we planted as a cover crop took over the gravel FM laid down between the beds last summer.

My plan was to use those pavers seen on the left as paths between the raised beds. I also cleared out some old parsley from the box on the lower right and planted sweet peas.

 My incredibly simple trellis, I hope it holds. 

 I leveled the soil/gravel and began to lay down the pavers. As this is a downward slope, I found I was setting them in more like steps rather than a flat path. That could be a real hazard, so I dug these out and started over.

 Satisfied with this imperfect path, I carried on and added the remaining pavers where they would be most helpful.

I top-dressed the whole thing with a layer of gravel. It will probably be planted with some creeping thyme between pavers to keep the soil in place. For now, I'm very happy with it.

 Much of our focus for this year's projects will be on this part of the garden, so it feels great to get a jump start on the season. A few more paths, some tilling and amending of the soil and adding a few more permanent vegetables like artichokes and asparagus will keep us busy for a long while. Oh, and weeding as well. I keep this pace going because I tell myself that projects like this, if done right the first time, I will only have to do once, then I can move on to improve another part of the garden. With two acres on our hands, I predict I will be busy for the rest of our lives. Here's hoping.

That's it for this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always, thank you for reading and commenting. Happy gardening one and all!