March 7, 2011 - Garden Cleanup

I felt half way human this morning. My cold seemed to be winding down, and the sun was shining, so it was a good time to start the garden cleanup! It was in dire need, as we left last fall while the garden was still alive and producing. You can just imagine what the winter weather did to it. There were dead morning glory vines all over the fence, dead hollyhocks, dead tomato plants, dead squash vines......just a garden full of dead. Even the raspberry posts and the dog kennel suffered the wrath of winter, and are sitting there askew from gale force winds, waiting to be set erect.



Half of the north garden got cleaned out. Notice the tipsy raspberry posts....that must have been a heck of a wind storm!

The tomato structure was disassembled, and the buckets emptied and stacked. They will be cleaned with soap, water and bleach, and reused for this year's tomato crop. I moved the two small hoop structures from the east garden, but the wood had rotted badly on one of them, so it had to be disassembled and disposed of. I do have room to move three or four of the better boxes from the east garden to use back here, which will give me quite a bit more planting room this year. All of these boxes need a fresh coat of paint.

By noon the clouds rolled in and it got too cold to work outside any longer. I need some warmer weather!


The results of a morning's work.


A sink full of overwintered carrots for Cookie. Even though they aren't fit for our consumption, the rabbit thinks they're delicious, and he eats them tops and all.

23 comments:

  1. Boy you sure did a major clean-up! I piddled around and ran out of nice warm sun today, so my clean up is on HOLD AGAIN!

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  2. Glad you're feeling well enough to get out there and get some spring cleaning done! They said it was supposed to hit 50 here today, but they lied. I went out anyway and got some stuff done too. It's nice to come back in tired and sit down with a hot cup of tea.

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  3. Gosh, you wait a long time to remove the debris from last year's garden. I'm always afraid that it'll make the bugs even worse the following year. However....i'm a certified poopyhead, too! Haha!

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  4. Lynda, we're expecting rain all week. I hope the weather man is wrong, and we get sunshine instead!

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    Alison, it did make 50F here this morning, but only in the sunshine. For a while, I was actually too warm working in my sweatshirt.

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    EG Poopyhead, how am I supposed to clean up a garden in Washington when I'm in Arizona? Huh? Huh? Huh? I can't help it if Mr. Granny drags me away before I get everything removed.

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  5. So glad to read that you are feeling a little better. It must be so nice to get out to the garden, clean it up, and prepare it for the next growing season. I hope you get some warmer weather soon.

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  6. LOL, Rachel, I hope I get a load of compost soon! And warmer weather.

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  7. 50 degrees there in the NW and 50 degrees here in the SE today. I didn't get as much done as you did. Well, nothing at all gardening-wise, to be specific. Glad your cold is better and you're able to get out.

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  8. Dianefaith, it seemed like I worked awfully hard for the little I got done! I hope I can get as much time in the garden again tomorrow, then I hope I can get my youngest son over to help move those garden boxes!

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  9. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just twitch our noses like Samantha and all the tedious stuff would be done, so we have time for the "fun" stuff?
    Hope you keep feeling better. Everybody around here has been feeling yukky since we moved to this place in December. Gotta wonder...
    Been alot of stuff going on in my life, but I'm back at the blogging, if you want to stop by...

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  10. glad your feeling better.. as for the garden clean up.. the older i get the slower i get... ahhh whats a few months eh...

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  11. SB, my nose is so red and runny, I wouldn't dare twitch it...I think it would fall right off my face! It was fun visiting your blog again :-)

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    Roasted, time goes by so darned fast! It's time to plant, and I have no beds readied!

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  12. My goodness Granny...it looks like you got quite a bit of work done even though the weather got cold!

    You must have had some fierce winds there for the raspberry posts to be leaning like that!

    I bet that Cookie will be one happy rabbit with all of those carrots to eat!

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  13. Glad to see you're up and running! It feels so good to look out and see readied beds! (I wouldn't know at the moment...) Great job getting it started!

    I've been spending some time looking through the past couple of years posts, pretty much where I got my inspiration to do ANY gardening! Just thought I'd let you know I enjoy it. I absolutely love your blog. It is a treat for me!

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  14. I don't envy you, I'm in the same boat! At least all the dead vines are now gone, but the weeds are taking over the mulched beds... bright GREEN already while the grass is still dead LOL

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  15. Looks great, and your harvest will be used so be proud! Cookie will be happy, certainly.

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  16. Nice to see you are feeling better and are getting the garden back in shape. After new england cold winter and snow it feels so good even if the weather is in 40s over here :) I hope you get some good sunny days to get your started with planting.

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  17. I would agree with Cookie on the overwintered carrots.

    Glad you are feeling a bit better today.

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  18. Meems, Cookie thinks so ;-) Annie and Otto like them too.

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    Robin, my daughter said we had 60mph sustained winds one day, with stronger gusts. I've seen 80mph winds here before, and we've lost our shingles twice in 20 years. And the big maple tree.

    You should see the dog kennel. I don't understand how wind could have done that to chain link and metal posts!

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    Thank you, Megan! That means a lot to me.

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    Erin, at least you're getting your painting done, I haven't even located my paintbrushes yet!

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    Barbie, I wish I'd given the carrots some protection, so that we could be enjoying them too.

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    Sarada, it's supposed to get warmer today, but rainy by this afternoon. I hope I can get something done before it gets too wet.

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    Kelly, my cold doesn't seem any worse for being outside most of yesterday. I think I'm about over it now.

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  19. Those carrots don't look too bad to me, what's wrong with them? Have they gone woody?

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  20. Jan, they had all frozen solid, and when you bite into them they just crumble. The flavor wasn't bad at all, nice and sweet, but the texture is all wrong. They're quite small, so Cookie will eat a couple of them a day and they won't go to waste. There are more where those came from :-(

    We don't usually get such hard freezes here, in past years carrots have survived the winters.

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  21. I guess that is the one good thing this year for me. I had barely anything growing and cleaned almost all of it up last fall. So that I don't have to do. But I've been working on finding the plants that my landscape designer wants me to plant in the yard. It's going to be a real chore to plant everything this spring. The whole yard is currently empty.

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  22. Daphne, I did have a lot of it cleaned up before we left, but all those morning glory vines were still green and blooming, and I didn't have the heart! Boy, is it ever a job getting them untangled from the fencing, now that they are dead and dried. Most of the other cleanup is debris from the neighbor's trees, and dead flower stalks. It just takes time....and energy. I have a lot of the first, not much of the second.

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