Monday, November 3, 2014

Garden Project Completed!

And now for lots of pictures of dirt!

My gardening project that I mentioned a few weeks ago is finally complete!  (Ish.)  I got the front area between our garage and breezeway doors looking much nicer, though of course you can't really tell right now.  The biggest problem was the soil quality.  It was full of rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks.  So, naturally, I sifted my dirt.  Yep, you read that correctly.  This project took me over a month (granted, I ignored it for 2 weeks straight), and it wasn't until the last two days that I realized we had an old window screen, which works way better as a dirt sifter than an old colander.  That's also why there were only two days left in the project then. :)  Alright, so let's play Memory Lane, just to make the transformation really dramatic.  Or at least sort of dramatic.  Oh, who am I kidding?  It's dirt.

This first picture was taken before we even owned the house.  You can see the soil is full of rocks, and I don't mean the large, decorative ones around the perimeter.  I don't even mean those 3 medium-size rocks hanging out in the middle.  I mean all the smallish rocks that are EVERYWHERE.


Moving on.  With a little work, our garden looked like this.  Um, yeah, I said a little work.  And this is in the fall.


But this Spring, we had lots of tulips!  That was lovely!


But there were still lots of rocks.  You can see them pretty clearly in this picture:


Finally, I never really took care of the garden, which will probably never change, but it just got overgrown.


So, this fall, I pulled out everything.  I potted the plants I wanted to keep, set the bulbs aside for re-planting later, and took out all the weeds.  Then I dug down a few inches and sifted all the rocks out of my dirt before shoveling it back in.  I took out probably about 8 5-gallon buckets worth of rocks.


Looking at this picture now, I can tell that I need to add some more dirt in the back, but I think I might wait for Spring for that.

I replanted all the bulbs I pulled out, and also added 40 more tulips, 15 hyacinths, and 40 crocuses. :)

In the Spring, I plan to add more plants - mostly perennials - so that the weeds won't have as much space to prosper.

On the other side of our breezeway door, I planted this yellow mum that I won.


And look how nice and rock-free my dirt is now!


Love and Very Small Rocks,
Leah Joy

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