Things are still slowly progressing in my backyard. I got more paper bags down. Getting them down is the easy part. Keeping them in place through windy days is quite another. I had a bit of a pattern set up to help me keep all the corners down, but my containers are too large and the bags are too narrow, so I'm not having a whole lot of fun with this part of the project.

One other thing that is seriously slowing my progress is that it is definitely difficult to get concrete blocks! Home Depot is the only place I can get them without buying in bulk. Why am I not buying in bulk? A few reasons, actually. First off, I just don't have the cash available to purchase over 100 blocks at almost $4 a piece. Next is getting them to my house. I can't possibly get them all into my car. Delivery would add yet another $50-$75 to my total. So I have to forgo the larger landscaping companies and get them from Home Depot, as they're the only place in my vicinity that carries them (Rona doesn't carry them in this province), and even having said that, there are only select HDs that actually stock them. The one up the street from me doesn't. So for the ones I've used up until now I've had to drive over to the one in Bowmanville and bring them home 5 blocks at a time. Why five? Well, that's what fits in my trunk, and I'm not sure I want to put more than 250 lbs of stuff in my trunk at any one time anyway.

So that worked for a while, then those were bought up, and after two unsuccessful trips I decided to ask someone when they were getting more. The guy told me they actually had some, but that they were not unloaded yet and would be placed on the floor shortly. Two weeks later they still weren't there. After my fourth unsuccessful visit I figured it was time to start looking elsewhere. So I guess off to Whitby I go.

So here are some random pictures of the 'construction corner'. As you can see, everything is growing nicely. The blocks are very uneven, but I'll worry bout that when I put the second layer on next year. They'll sink a little during the spring thaw and I'm hoping to use mortar to level out the border.

One other thing I've been noticing is how bloody uneven my entire yard is. I knew it was, but it's crazy ridiculous just how lumpy it is. See how the blocks are totally uneven at the back, and if you look at the carpet o' bags, you can see how lumpy it is. This whole project is a good thing in more ways than one. Once I get the border down and then cover the bags with straw, it'll help to level it out a little while it decomposes over the winter months. Next season when I start adding the raised beds and the soil, it will go even further to evening everything out.

And as a parting shot I leave you with my potatoes, just because they're growing like crazy and they make me happy.

There's lots more to come. These pictures were all taken on July 13th, and since it's the first of August today you know I have more to show!

The garden makeover is coming along slowly. This time around I do actually have some pictures of the 'construction corner', as there has been a little progress.

Making the ground level is hard! So I decided I'll just plop them down this year (and probably into 2016), and then level as I do the second row on top, using the mortar to help me. I hope it works! I am ever the optimist when it comes to my little projects! You can also see the beginning of the grass and weed barrier I've begun. I had intended to use cardboard, but I just don't have a whole lot of large boxes, and it would be a nightmare to use regular and smallish ones. I know, I tried that a few years back and gave up right quick. As I was clearing away some weeds from the main patch, an idea occurred to me. Since the brown leaf bags are intended to decompose, why not use them as my barrier? So far, so good. They're nice and thick and I can still walk on them when they're wet, so I can access all my containers after a rain or while I'm watering. For now, my container garden is doing a great job of holding the edges down, but I'm running out, so pretty soon you'll see some makeshift weights... pretty much anything I can find in my garage that can be of use!

Here are some side-by-sides of my container garden, so we can get an idea of how well things can grow in containers. I did do some research on this before I started (when I realized that my actual garden was going to be useless to me this year), and found out that pretty much anything can be grown in a container, as long as you follow a few rules. I used potting soil, mixed with compost and topsoil. You can use just potting mix, but it's really expensive, which is why I opted to mix in the topsoil to get a little more bang for my buck. Picture one of my herbs was taken on June 29th, the sage (top left-hand corner) transplanted from cuttings I rooted indoors from some store bought organic sage. Next to that (clockwise), is Italian Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Basil, and Dill, all from seed. Everything is growing relatively nicely except for the chamomile. It seems that herb hates me. I attempted to get some seedlings to grow while I was doing all the rest of my regular stuff back in March (tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.), but not even one came up. I bought a couple of plants earlier and planted them with the strawberries, but I don't think they've grown a centimeter in the last two months. As you can see from these pictures, these seeds just are not co-operating. Maybe the whole pack is a bunch of duds, although that is highly unlikely.

The picture right beside it was taken on July 8th, and you can see the wonderful growth. Still no chamomile, though, so I decided to fill the void with some rosemary that I (finally!) got to root indoors. That's another plant I have a tough time with. According to Pinterest, it's super easy to propagate rosemary (and lavender) from cuttings. Nope, not so much. I had a whole lot of failure before these two finally took. You better believe I'm guarding these babies with my life! Oh, and the lavender? No success with that yet, although I am trying a different method right now. If it works, I'll let you know.

Potatoes are another plant that is supposedly super easy to grow in containers. In this case, I have to agree. As you can see from these pictures, they're growing like weeds! There are a few simple rules to follow, so I'll do a container gardening Hub for potatoes one day soon (after harvest, so I have the complete picture, start to finish, so stay tuned!

I didn't really have a good June picture of the zucchini. I'll be honest, it wasn't looking promising. The yellow (on the left) was kinda' growing, but the green was all small and sad with some deformed leaves. A couple of weeks later they're still not fantastic, but they're larger and flowering, so there may be hope yet for the zucchini (this time around the yellow is on the right).

Cucumbers. I don't remember what kind - I think one plant is straight and the other is the pickling kind. When I brought the seedlings home from the nursery, some of them died, so I couldn't remember which was which. I guess I'll know when I get fruit! In this case, you may notice a bottle inside one of the containers. I am trying an experiment for something that really piqued my interest. However, I think I may have used the wrong type of plant, because there seems to be no difference. I'll let you know what the experiment is, what I'll change next season, and what the results are at the end of the season.

Here are my sad, sad little pepper plants. Although it is a vast improvement over what they would have been had I left them in the ground. Remember this picture from last update?

So there's a little progress with the peppers, but I don't think I'll be bottling any home-grown roasted sweet peppers this season.

So here's a weird thing I did not notice until just this instant. I have no pictures specifically of my tomato plants! That is really strange, because they dominate my garden (every year), and I have a few different experiments going with them right now to find the best method, and yet, when I went to upload pictures of my tomatoes (saving the best for last, I thought), I didn't have any! So I cropped these from other pictures I have so you can see the growth. I will do a whole post on the experiments I'm running at the end of the season when I have my results.

So that's it for update #3. One of the things that have come out of this slow garden makeover progress is that I have time to try out some methods that I've read about, and this way I can see what works, what doesn't, and what I may want to incorporate into my new and improved gardening system. Stay tuned, I have more updates on the way!

Originally posted July 16, 2015 on sonjarants.weebly.com

You may be wondering if I've given up on the idea of my backyard overhaul because I haven't posted weekly updates as promised. Quite the contrary, I'm still totally into this project, the problem is that it requires a whole lot of money and time. The way my life seems to go is that I usually have only one of those at any given time - so progress is slow. I also had to take some time out to load up my container garden. Even though I cleared a patch in my garden, figuring I'd work around it, I don't think that we tilled the soil enough. Every seedling except for the brussels sprouts died, and the bunnies ate the sprouts. All the plants I brought home and stuck in the ground were still pretty much the same size two weeks later. My sweet peppers are still dwarves. So I moved as many plants as possible into containers to try to salvage at least some of the season. I pretty much let the rest of it go to weed. I'll pluck a brown bag or two every week, but I'm hoping to have the whole back of the yard covered in brown bags to get a fresh start next spring.

Note the sad, tiny pepper plants. Although the ones I moved are not too much bigger, they at least look alive. I didn't crop this photo at all, so you can see the scale next to grass.

Here are the transplanted peppers. Because I'm trying to get as much out of the ground as possible, I used some makeshift containers - an old dresser that is going to go to the trash heap soon, I may as well use the drawers for something right now. Transplanted my mint into another one.

Cucumbers, Chocolate & Citrus Mint, Lemon Balm, Potatoes.

So here's what I have so far (not too much, I'm afraid). I just did not have a whole lot of time to do any work because my shifts at work were incredibly insane. Now that I'm not working, I don't have a whole lot of money - everything we have has to be stretched a whole lot further than before, so I'll have to be a little more creative and work just a little slower, even though I actually have the time now.

Rear: Mint, Potatoes, Lavender. Front: Tomatoes.

I'll keep you posted. Not weekly as I had originally hoped, but I'll definitely keep you updated. I'll continue to post pics of my garden project, as well as my container veggies - let's see how well they do, how quickly they grow, and what food they bear.

Rear: Strawberries, Cucumbers, Mint. Center: Lemon Balm. Front: Peppers.

In the meantime, I've got some other projects underway (I may have ADD), and I'm happy to let you know how they pan out. I dug up one of the pitiful tomato plants that were left behind originally due to a shortage of containers and potting mix and am running a little experiment to see if my home brew of fertilizer can jolt it back to life.

Rear: Lavender, Yellow & Green Zucchini. Center & Front: Tomatoes.

And of course, I launched my new site dedicated to food, unusuallydelicious.weebly.com, where I post my recipes, trying to give you unusual if at all possible. I really wanted to focus on foraged food, but I found that those 'weeds' are most abundant in the spring, and I did not have too much time to go searching. I'll keep trying though. Oddly enough, the weed I was most looking forward to eating this season was purslane, and there's not even one in my weed patch (AKA my garden)! I found a couple of tiny plants in the front yard, but I sprayed them because they were right in front of the porch. I'll keep looking. Every year I have picked purslane from my garden all summer, so maybe I just need to have some patience.

Herb Garden (clockwise): Sage (grown inside from cuttings), Curly Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Basil, Dill.

Unfortunately, the day I took these pictures (June 17, 2015), I neglected to take one of the "construction corner". Rest assured, it looked exactly the same at the last post (see it here), except for maybe some taller grass at the edges. I think hubby has given up on the edger this season... maybe he's not too impressed with the obstacle course I've set up in the yard this year.

Originally posted July 13, 2015 on sonjarants.weebly.com

Originally posted May 11, 2015 on sonjarants.weebly.com

Originally posted April 30, 2015 on sonjarants.weebly.com