Keeping Up With The Strubs(es?)

Or are they trying to keep up with us?

I wondered what the neighbors behind us were doing a couple weekends ago with the truck in their backyard. They finally mentioned it on Julie Strub's blog. They were putting in a couple raised beds for growing vegetables. Was this a coincidence, or were they trying to keep up with the Freddies?

A couple months ago I ended my ten or so year hiatus and decided to try and get our old vegetable garden back to some semblance of order. There used to be about 400 square feet of raised beds in our back yard.

The bed in the picture above is what the rest of them used to look like except this one was made out of something other than redwood. Oddly enough, it lasted longer than the others.

Working in maintenance gardening I lost my desire for outside work years ago and ignored the garden more and more. Finally it became completely overgrown with berry bushes, grass and morning glory. I finally decided to try and clean it up if for no other reason than it was a mess and a shame to see such a nice old garden in such a state.

Connie and I had pulled some of the bad stuff out over the last few years. Back in May, almost on a whim, I took my weed whacker and cut everything down in the area nearest to the house. Then I spent an hour or so for maybe four days turning over the soil where the old raised beds used to be. There's only a trace of the old redwood I used for the borders of the beds left, most of it rotten.

So here's what it looks like now. There's one area you can't see off to the far right that's cleared as well giving us between two to three hundred square feet of the garden back, but it's nowhere near done yet.

You can't tell from the picture but the morning glory and berry bushes keep popping up daily and I have to go back and dig them out as they emerge.
If you look real close you'll see four broccoli plants in the bed on the right. They're not doing too well and I'm not sure if they'll survive my daily digging up of emerging weeds.

I've put one tomato plant in the bed to the left already and am planning on planting a few more from six packs I'll buy locally. I usually start everything from seed but I started too late this year, aside from the fact there may not be much room with all the bad stuff still popping up.


The picture to the left is the area towards the back fence, still overgrown, where we used to grow tomatoes in years past. Also on the right was another bed we used that's covered with old dead brush that's going to be a real hassle to clear. Those areas are the next part of the project and I'm not looking forward to it. It's going to be nasty, but I have to do it if only to keep up with the Strubs.




The picture to the left is the garden area from the second picture years ago. It was quite a thriving garden at times back then. I'm not sure if we can get it back to what it used to be but, if we can, it will probably take years.