As you can see, it needed some attention:
Some of the 'weeds' in the picuture is the mint that I naively planted 10 years ago when we built my garden box. Do yourself a favor and plant your mint in a container unless you want to spend your spare time yanking it from your garden. It is the most invasive plant known to man!
I converted the box to the square foot garden method until 2 years ago. By following sfg, I plant about twice as much as I did before switching.
Last spring, I replaced the original dirt with the square foot gardening soil mix. There was an initial investment, but those weeds in the above photo were a breeze to pull out. My old soil was hard, cakey, and extremely weedy. My plants benefited from the new soil too.
I filled the box up with more leaf compost, because the soil had settled over the past year. Now, I'm ready to plant.
I was surprised to find that 3 herbs survived the mild winter: thyme, parsley, and oregano.
My blueberry bushes have lots of flowers that will hopefully turn to delicious berries soon. I need to get a net over these bushes before that happens though or the birds will be dishing on the berries before we get a chance to.
My garden is ready for May 15, the last day of frost for my region.
Have you opened up your garden yet? Let us kow in the comments.
To learn more about square foot gardening, check out Mel Bartholomew's book, All New Square Foot Gardening
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This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.
I love a clean bed--loaded with possibility! I have parsley that reseeds and pops up everywhere. I leave what I want and let it grow, and pull up the rest, and I have parsley all year round.
ReplyDeleteAthena - Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteMy parsley overwintered from last year. It's in one of the flower beds. I'm going to leave it because it will attract swallowtail butterflies.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about the blueberries. We have some bushes about that size, I think. We still haven't gotten much from them. About how long did it take for the bushes to produce something significant?
Barb - My blueberry bushes are 2 or 3 years old and this year it has flowered more than before. Hopefully the flowers will turn to berries. I haven't had very many berries up to this point.
DeleteWow - looking very good! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susan!
DeleteThe only mint I have is in a whiskey barrel and still I pull and pull and pull to keep it under control. Wasn't it nice to have good weather for the weekend and be able to work outside?
ReplyDeleteBeth - the weather was awesome! I moved some mint to a container and I'm still pulling it out too.
Delete