Garden Friday

 It's Garden Friday once again,
and we're enjoying brisk days under a Carolina Blue sky.

The cover crops sown a couple of weeks ago
have started to fill in the two new raised beds.

This Winter Mix should enable the soil to soak up some nutrients
and be ready for planting in the spring.
It also helps to keep the soil warmer, so sowing can occur sooner.
It's wonderful to have something colorful out there 
during the bleaker time of year.

The leek are off to a sllllooowww start,
no doubt hindered by our cooler-than-normal daytime temperatures. 

 One ray of hope springs forward in these seed trays 
that were all but forgotten under the lorapetalum bush.
With the sporadic dousing we've been getting,
it's no wonder that they have done well with absolutely no help from me.
The anticipation of fresh greens is highly motivating!
Perhaps I will even start some seed trays inside
and see what happens.

Being gifted these bushel baskets,
I feel the obligation to do something creative with them,
even if it's just to transplant my salad greens into them!
I love me some old baskets!

Yesterday, I took advantage of having a day off

to harvest the remaining loofah on the trellis.

Many of them are squishy and nasty looking,

which is what I've been told is expected.

They will be left to dry out and be ready for processing

in the next couple of months.

Check out the cool wagon I found on CL for $20!

It has come in mighty handy these last few weeks.

Bless its heart,
the allysum is still blooming
and providing pollen for the bees that are hearty enough to withstand our weather.
What a treat to still have such glorious color!

Plans this weekend include lighting up the garden
for the holidays.
It's a new venture, so it should be fun.
Let's hope we have enough extension chords to get the job done!
Enjoy your weekend, y'all!

Shedderiffic!

With glorious conditions over the last couple of weeks,

it seemed like a great time to tame this storage shed.

This roomy building houses mostly garden & lawn equipment

and tools.

There is also a loft upstairs in which some furnishings are kept.

Its generous size ensures plenty of storage space 

for unused items.

The double set of doors each lead to their own space.

The area on the right has already been organized.

I forgot to take before photos,

but the after shots come later in this post.

Here's how the left side of the shed looked when I started.

As you can see, there is still plenty of room for items,

it only needed a bit of tweaking and sweeping.

The first thing I did was to empty it out of almost everything.

The heavy bags of soil against the right wall required a hand truck,

so that they could be taken to the other side of the shed.

I also used some nails to hang up the large rounds of cables,

to free up some of the floor space.

Whenever possible when organizing, I use the vertical space.

Next, I dealt with the hanging tools.

There are tools here for cleaning, gardening and lawn care.

The white cabinet was moved over to the end of these hanging rods.

I sorted the hanging tools into like piles.

There are repeats of some of the items,

but at this time we are not purging anything, just reorganizing what is there.

Even though we didn't rid ourselves of any tools,

there is ample hanging space for all of it.

Like items were hung together.

We will go through the contents at another time

to see if anything can be donated or sold.

Another task I had in mind

was to clean and sharpen anything that will be staying.

Now is a great time to tend to tools

so that they are ready for spring gardening duties.

The items on the upper rafters were not touched,

but we can tackle that on another day,

when I have access to a ladder so that I can reach everything easily.

There are a couple of shepherd's hooks that need to come down,

to accommodate new bird feeders.

For now, things are a bit tidier,

and I made sure to leave room between the collection of trash cans in the background,

so that the contents are available as needed.

Here's the before and after.

Not bad, huh?

Here's the right side of the shed that had been spiffed up previously.

What a fabulous structure to have onsite. 

A spacious potting bench lines one wall.

For now, we have placed the terra cotta pots on top,

and some odds and ends underneath.

The sink right next to it is so handy.

This storage cabinet was actually upstairs with the furniture,

but wasn't being used.

It was the perfect solution for storing all of the other pots
that had previously taken up much of the shelving space.
The heavier pots were placed near the bottom,
as the cabinet is not secured to the wall.

This was an enjoyable and very satisfying project.
In fact, I almost felt guilty getting paid to do it,
but I got over that.
My intention is to make my clients' lives easier,
more manageable, or at the very least, less worrisome.
Who doesn't want to make their  lives easier?

Do you have any spring organizing tasks planned?

Garden Friday

It's slim pickins' this Garden Friday.
With the seasons seemingly going from summer to winter
without much autumn in between,
the garden is at nearly a standstill.
The only thing growing with any vigor is the kale.
I pulled up a few teeny carrots just to take a taste.
Sweet as sugar, but not enough to feed a mouse.
I left them for the resident bunnies to find.

 About the only thing that got my juices going this week
was the sight of the cover crops sprouting.
We had a couple of days of constant rain,
and that was enough to germinate these seeds.
This is my first experience with cover crops,
and it will be exciting to see how it affects these raised rows in the spring.

 For the most part,
it's leaf invasion time!
Our lawn is strewn with a crinkled and crunchy cover.
I see raking in my future.
Big K will most likely run the mower over them one more time,
to break up the bigger bits.
This way, they can be gathered up to use as flower bed mulch,
or left in place to feed the soil for springtime.

Our neighbor has bagged up and donated her stash,
so that it can be added to our leaf bin.
This leaf bin was here when we bought the house
and we just continue to add to it.
I haven't been good about turning it,
but I can imagine it will make a great soil additive. 
Here's a fabulous video about making leaf mold.
I like his idea of keeping the leaves in the plastic bags,
and just poking them with a pitchfork to aerate.
I'm gonna try that this year with some of the leaves
and then note how they break down compared with those in the open bin.
If you don't already subscribe to this chap's video channel,
you're really missing out.
Every couple of weeks he sends a link to his latest gardening video
and there is always something to learn.

Big K scored bigtime when he was perusing a local swap-n-shop site.

The folks were cleaning out their garage and found this "Lawn Buddy"

that they no longer needed.

He got in touch with them right away and we went to pick it up.

It looked brand new and was a real bargain for $15!

These little carts are so useful in the garden.
Even if you have raised beds, it's sometimes necessary to bend over to tend them.
With these cute gadgets, it sits at just the right height
so that you can weed, plant or harvest while seated.
They can also assist with hauling tools, seedling pots, soil
or small harvests and the lid folds over to use as a handle,
so that you can pull it behind you.
My farmer friends Faye and Lynn in Florida have a few of these
and they are invaluable.
What a great find!

We are hoping for a few more autumnal days
before the harsher December weather kicks in.
Garden Friday may be taking a hiatus
if nothing much is worth reporting.
We'll see how it works out.

What's happening in your neck of the woods?