The Garden? You mean we have a garden?

   For the past 6 months I have been totally neglecting my garden.   I have been completely busy this year with one thing or another.  I have also had a lot of excuses, like "it is too hot", or "when my house is clean", or "I just have too much to do", you know, the typical excuses.  The truth is, between my calling, my house work, helping my kids with all the things they need help with, etc., I just haven't gotten too it.  Well, now that the weather is so nice, I have been thinking that now is the time.  Also, when I drive by Home Depot or Lowes and see the vegi plants sitting out side the garden entrance, I get a little rush of excitement, and the gardening fever starts to hit.  It is strange, because it is hard work, but I like it.  But sometimes I just procrastinate, because I know I have so much to do, and I have other more pressing things to do, but I want to do it, but I don't.  Yes, I know a long run on sentence.  

    Anyway, Saturday morning, my kids rooms were picked up, not vacuumed, but in order.  I realized that I had some time, so I spent most of the day working on it.  It was such a mess, that I was almost scared.  What would I face after more than 6 months with out hardly ever venturing out to it.  I left the irrigation working, so it was getting water, but that is it.  

I found some interesting surprises.  First of all, I have a bunch of tomato plants.  Most of them were just growing in the sand, and not in the garden boxes.  The tomato plant in the garden box was huge and had about 8 ripe tomatoes on it.  (We had some for lunch and dinner.)   There are many tomatoes that will be ready soon.  I also found 3 lettuce plants.  One was huge, and was ready to have leaves harvested.  I have a bunch of strawberry plants.  Also, I have an artichoke plant that is huge, it takes up the whole 4 x 4 ft box, and is 3 ft tall.  

I was going to take out the artichoke plant since I have planted artichokes in the front yard as part of the landscaping (edible landscaping) since it can grow for years.  I am going to keep it, and hope that I get a lot of artichokes.  Because I need more garden space, I am going to make a long two foot wide garden box along the north wall of the yard.  That is a better spot for the plants anyway (lots of sun, no wind).  I still have 4 other 4x4 boxes in the side yard, and one 4x4 box in the east side of the yard that was going to be for the kids.  to grow things.  It got blasted by the wind.  So it didn't work out.  I will probably move it.   Wind is one of my biggest problems.  Because of where my house is, certain times of the year, wind is brutal, and it rips the plants apart.  

Anyway, There were a few other surprises in the garden.  There were so many weeds.  They were everywhere.  They were really tall, really hard to remove, and sticky.  They were covered with this sticky clear stuff, and it got on anything touching it.  I think some of these weeds emit  it.  It was good I had a plastic bag as a barrier.   I still have a lot of work to do.  Put up new nets, get the grids made, finish weeding the areas around the garden, organize all my stuff, finish fixing the irrigation, etc.  

I also have 4 fruit trees still in the original pot to plant, I need to plant them right away, cut some of the roots off, and hope they survive the planting.   I also need to build and fill the new garden boxes I will need, and install the irrigation for them.  

The weather is nice, so I hope to spend many days outdoors working on these things.  

I hope it doesn't get that bad again.  Even if I am busy, if I just go out there once a week, remove a few weeds, and see what is going on.  Even if I don't have time to grow anything new.  I think before when I was neglecting it, I felt bad that I had neglected it, and didn't want to even think about it.  So of course, it would get worse.  That can't happen anymore!