Fall Backyard

Brand new garden back in January 2010

The fall season veggies do best for us since the summers get so freakin’ hot and our winters are so mild.  I used to try to start things from seed but always had issues with things munching on them in the garden and don’t have a bright enough place in the house to do them there, so transplants it is!  This season I got broccoli, kale, cauliflower (purple and yellow!), cilantro, parsley, dill, chives, basil, onions, carrots (still from seed) and some lettuce (which it may be still too hot for but we’ll see).

Being as OCD as I am, I am a huge fan of square foot gardening 1) to maximize the little space I have, and 2) to keep everyone neat and orderly.  There used to be fishing line marking my squares but the eye hooks rusted away so now I just eyeball it.

There is a shadier side to the garden so all of the herbs went down there and the other end has the onion sets and carrot seed.  Carrots are my absolute favorite all-time thing to grow (followed by red potatoes) because they taste so amazing when they’re homegrown!  Kind of like how tomatoes do :)  When they’re ready I’ll usually dig one up, wash it off at the hose, and munch on it while I’m weeding or doing other stuff in the backyard.

I also got a new soaker hose cause, you know, I’m too lazy to stand and water a 4×12 garden.  No, not really, it’s that I don’t have enough blood for all the mosquitoes we have right now :/  Anyway, I get these flat 50′ soakers and they fit perfect in here.

Back in February, I stained our new side gate with SW’s Deckscapes Waterborne Semi-Transparent stain and loved it.  It still looks this good and water beads right off of it.  So I knew that’s what I wanted to use on the pergola too.

I used their “Cedar Bark” color on the gate but wanted the pergola to be a bit darker and less red so I used “Hawthorne” and think it came out perfect!  Well, the color did, my cleanliness, notsomuch.  Don’t look too close, there are some drips I need to try and get rid of :/  But hey, it’s hard to stain well on top of a ladder (and around a pond).  Of course I highly recommend staining before you build, I we were just too impatient as usual.

So our backyard is all ready to go for the “winter”!  It looks even more polished off now that the pergola is stained.  Now if the mosquitoes would just take a hike that’d be great.  On to the multitude of interior/craft projects I have!