Our yard was in a bad state when we bought our house. Only about a third of of yard had grass, the rest was dirt. There were about a dozen dead trees on our property (some hanging right over our house!). And the shrubbery left something to be desired. As we didn't have a long term solution in place yet, last year, we just worked on maintenance. Matt removed brush from a huga aree of our yard. We removed 14 trees that were either dead or located too close to our house for comfort. We also added grass to a huge section of our yard. Beyond that, last summer was spent enjoying our new house and making plans for turning our existing yard into our dream yard.
This year, I have big plans. We've already progressed on our grass mission. We started putting more seed down in late March. I will post pictures if the rain stops long enough to let me take some.
We have a huge challenge in growning any plants in our yard. We get very limited sun thanks to the insane number of trees in our yard. This is the google satellite image of our house. No joke. Our garage is actually under that little A tag, our house is just to the right of the garage...
We have a lot of trees.
After a lot of research, I decided to try and grow a few hardy plants that I thought might survive in dark conditions. I started some seeds inside and those plants are just about ready to be transplanted into containers and moved outside. This year, I'm going to try and grow string beans, spinach, mint, and basil. I choose string beans and spinach because various experts indicated that I could basically throw the seeds on the ground and get great results. I was also told that both vegetables will grow well in containers. And I've grown basil and mint before with pretty successful results.
Two weeks ago, I planted string bean and spinach seeds in Jiffy Greenhouses. These greenhouses were so easy to use and it took me less than 30 minutes to plant 12 sections of seeds.
Here they are the morning after planting, still just dirt:
This is 5 days after planting. The string beans are on the outside and the spinach is in the middle:
And 10 days after planting. All of the string beans have grown and are still growing, about half of the spinach plants have started growing.
Two weeks ago, I planted string bean and spinach seeds in Jiffy Greenhouses. These greenhouses were so easy to use and it took me less than 30 minutes to plant 12 sections of seeds.
Here they are the morning after planting, still just dirt:
And, this is just two full days after planting. Those String Beans started shooting up:
This is 5 days after planting. The string beans are on the outside and the spinach is in the middle:
And 10 days after planting. All of the string beans have grown and are still growing, about half of the spinach plants have started growing.
Hopefully this weekend, I'll have some time to transplant the string beans into containers and move them out onto my deck. With any luck, I'll be looking up recipes in no time.