Year 2 of Vegetable and Flower garden

 

We knew that when we bought our hours that our yard would be a multi year project. Here is a look at everything we did in the last year 

Phase 1: Spring 2024 

In Spring we built cages to go around our raised beds and our hydrangeas in order to prevent the deer from eating all of out plants again. We built these using chicken wire and 1X2s. It was relatively cheap and easy to make but ended up being a bit more time consuming than we thought. We attached the cages to the beds with hinges so that we could lift the cages off the beds without detaching them to plant and harvest. 

We also used a tiller to till the soil in all the beds but the perennial bed. We added a few more bags of dirt and compost to top off the beds because the soil had settled over the winter. 

 

For our flower beds they all got a good weeding and we added mulch to all of them this year. 

The raised bed covers 

Mulch in our front and back flower gardens 

Phase 2 Summer 2024 

We purchased a few more perennials this summer to add to our flower garden and I was able to split some of our plants from last year and start growing them in new places. 

The backyard is where we made the most progress. We cut a ton of dead trees down and continued to take down a lot of brush. We rented a stump grinder for a day and ground up a lot of stumps. Our goal is to make a safe area for our kids to play outside, 

Stumpfest 2024 

Phase 3: Fall 2024 

In Fall we rented a wood chipper for a day and shredded as many branches as we could to create a level area for our kids to play in. 

The area before the wood chips were added 

The many branch piles from trimming all the trees in our backyard 

The immediate aftermath of the wood chips- it took us a bit to spread them out to make a semi-level area. 

Oh what a year it has been. Our yard is finally starting to come together and look less like a disaster zone!