Tomorrow will either be week 2 or week 3 I’ve lost track of time. The greenhouse is starting to empty out. All of the squash, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, corn, potatoes, most of the celery, most of the peppers, all but 2 tomatoes, and some of the peas have been planted and seem to be happy. Oh and there are flowers glorious flowers to plant.
On Saturday we decided that if we changed the direction of the greenhouse it would actually make better use of the space. It had been running parallel to the fence and we intended to put the corn boxes between it and the lean to. No matter how we laid it out we kept running out of room. 
Where the lean to is will be where the kiln is about to go and the kiln will come out into the garden another 4 feet. This would have left no room to walk around the corn boxes. Flipping the greenhouse doesn’t really leave a lot of room to walk between it and the fence but there is plenty of space to walk everywhere else. I know me, last year I put bags of cucumbers and tomatoes behind the grapes up against the fence. Because it slopes there and you have to duck under and go around the grapes. I never went back there again. If I can’t easily get to it, it might as well not even exist.
Moving the greenhouse was simple, we each picked up an end and carried it to it’s new home. For now bags on both of the long sides are securing it down and it’s working. 
The “new” corn box is 4×8, lined with a fabric we bought for our son’s French drain stopped dirt from falling out. The box next to it was also supposed to be for corn but we decided to put the sweet potato slips in there. It is 2×8. 
The 4×8 box was built using some of our original gardens boxes Bill took apart and we amended and reused the dirt from those boxes. You can see the bare spot in the original garden on it’s back wall. Not 100% sure what will happen there. It was always a problem, the woods shade it out. With 68 plants the corn is probably crammed in a little to tight. Since they had been started in the house they are planted based on size, taller ones in the back, shorter ones in the front. Our sweet potato slips came from Johnny’s Seed Company and they arrived a day or so ago. While we ordered 25 they sent us around 50. Now some of those are tiny and some looked a little iffy but they all had roots! We ended up planting 23 in the 2×8 box and 23 in another 2×8 box on the side of the shop that we had strawberries in. 
We have never tried tomatoes on this wall before so this year we tucked four tomatoes in each box, a squash in the middle, celery and a pepper in the front. The rest of this rather large area is all berries. One of the next big moves is to move all the berry tubs around and build a frame which we can put netting over. The netting will allow pollinators in but keep birds out and we will be able to walk around in the berry room to do maintenance and harvesting. It is part of the whole year of experimenting to see what does well in a spot and what does not. The chickens used to free range all over the property but we have had to stop that. There are all the usual suspect predators around and we have lost some. The predators that we have been having the most trouble with lately are the “good boy pets”. We get a lot of stray cats and dogs up here. Rather than waiting for something to happen and reacting we took a proactive stance and just fenced it all in and now the chickens free range only in the fenced in gardens, but only when “not our dog” isn’t out there. The chickens help to keep weeds and bugs in check, and they are happier when they have space to roam. It means we need to take more precautions to protect the veggies. Hence the fencing around the boxes, not only does it stop the chickens from jumping up and snacking on or digging up the plants but it stops the cats from climbing in there and laying on them. In the lower boxes it stops Tas from eating them or digging them up. 
How does it all look now? This is the outside front wall of the new garden. One of the Concord grapes from in front of the shop that may make it. (We lost most of our grapes, all of the Niagara that were behind the shop and all but 3 of the Concords that were in front of the shop.) The idea is we put all the grapes around the new garden fence line with pumpkins and squash bags between the grape tubs. The small greenhouse on the right has pumpkins in it and the small greenhouse to the left has winter squash, Nothing fancy just butternut and spaghetti squash. Some of the Jack O Lantern pumpkin bags also have pole beans in them. These will be moved to the pumpkin arch over here 
but first it needs some cleaning up and also some landscape fabric. 
There that’s better. I only got 3 bags moved over but it’s a start. We train the pumpkin vines up over the cattle panel arch. When the pumpkins start growing we use netting and tie them to the fence so that they don’t break off and fall. Between skeletons climbing the fence and pumpkins hanging from it our fall decorating grows itself. The pole beans climb this as well and it makes it very easy to pick them as long as you remember to duck so you don’t hit your head on a pumpkin.
The back wall of the shop is a hot mess. 
Last year we grew watermelons up the wall. We did get a few melons but they were small. I got them out late, they didn’t get enough water or fertilizer and they just got over run by weeds, mint, and strawberries. I’m not sure this year what will go here. Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden) did a video where he talked about what happens when you plant out a watermelon start too late, after it has gotten big and even started to flower. He said that they just won’t do as much as they would if you had put them out when they were little or planted the seeds in the ground. This year my watermelon plants were little; we will see if they do better. This year all the melons will be grown inside the greenhouse. The idea came from Charles Dowding. While our climates are different perhaps the extra heat and controlled environment will help things along. We grew cantaloupes up the wall of the shop last year too over on the other side of the original garden fence. They did surprisingly well even though we did not feed them enough, the plants went out later when they were big, something kept digging in the boxes, and we had to fight off the birds. The fruits were not very sweet and that may be due to not fertilizing enough or having put them out when they were too big and had already started to flower. Again this year the plants were small when they went out and I’ve added netting to the open doors of the greenhouse so no birds. 
This is the main area of what was our original fenced in garden. We bought the Square Foot Gardening book, used his dirt recipe, built boxes from wood that Bill had milled and followed his plant layouts. The boxes were 4×4 and only 12″ tall. We actually laid out the grids on the soil using string. I loved that garden I would lay a board across two boxes and sit there and weed and plant and harvest. We were hooked hard on the idea of raised bed gardens because that was the first year we actually were able to grow anything of substance. Plus that grid was like balm on a weary soul. A couple years ago when we started up gardening again we pulled out all the wooden boxes because they were falling apart. We replaced them with these taller boxes made with PVC and metal roofing. One thing I would do differently is I would use wood on the top edges, they can be sharp. Last year I tried pool noodles on them and it helps but they do not hold up to the winter and if you lean to hard on them they rip. As testimony to how sharp that metal edge can be I fell and landed on one and got a nice thin slice on my arm for my trouble. I love the height. I love that we have a lot of flexibility with these boxes. We can cover them, we have used cattle panels over them in an arch, it’s easy to work the soil, and run irrigation. Because we filled the bottoms with logs we had, then covered that with cheap top soil and packed it down, then put a heavy layer of leaves on top of all that before adding the good dirt mixture we have had a lot of settling. This year we had to add a lot of compost and soil back into all the boxes they had sunk down almost 12″. Every year we had been using mulch/compost we made ourselves but this year we needed a bigger fix. In this part we have most of the celery, the leaks, more potatoes, peas, tomatoes, and peppers. Since there are still some boxes that haven’t had anything planted in them yet I will come back through here and add flowers and any extra veggies we have that need homes. 
Just outside of the original garden low beds run along the shop wall. This is where the cantaloupes were last year. This year it will have sunflowers and an assortment of other flowers. One issue we have with these beds along the shop wall is that when it rains hard the gutters overflow and everything gets washed out or beat down. Across from this are the pots that the Niagara grapes were in, since they died I put the cucumbers in those. 
Between them are large grow bags inside of kiddie pools that have asparagus and garlic (first time we have ever had garlic grow). The kiddie pools do two things first it makes it a lot less tempting for the digging pests like moles, voles, gophers, and mice and second we did not have water run so I would fill the kiddie pool and then let that water wick into the bags. There were drain holes on the sides so that they never were sitting in water after a rain. We don’t use them as much because Bill has done a fantastic job of installing a lot of drip tape and automatic systems for the beds.
Years ago Bill bought me a multiple tier fountain. It cracked and no longer worked as a fountain so I filled it with dirt and planted flowers in it. Some of the tiers broke further and so I am left with the base. Not only is this pretty but what makes it picture worthy is that this year I had not planted a single flower in it yet. These are ALL volunteers from last year! Can you believe that? 
The pumpkins have gone crazy! This is just two weeks worth of growth. When I put them in these bags they were tiny! It has warmed up enough now that they can move to their homes for the summer and the little greenhouse can find a different purpose. I really do think that these small greenhouse from Aldi’s were amazing. We had a cool, wet spring and the nights were chilly. I was able to plant the starts into the bags they will spend the summer in and then put those bags into these. It kept critters away and kept them warm and they thrived. It also allowed me to keep the new grapes warm and protected from all the rain we were getting. 
I don’t even know how this happened. All of these bags lining this 20′ side of the greenhouse are summer squash. Greens and yellows, straight neck and crooked not just on this one side but also on the other side and also tucked into at least two of the raised beds. I thought I had planted a reasonable number of them, six tops. Even that I felt was perhaps more than two people could eat. Yet here we are and I am afraid. Okay I’m not really I don’t think they will all make it. In the last few years the squash bugs have just laid waste to our plants. I will leave you here in my happy place. There’s an extra chair, you bring the lemonade.
