The rebirth of a vegetable garden

I have blogged or talked about gardening in the past and in this blog I'll try to put it to a timeline.

The house we bought had a small, overgrown garden area that first needed to be dug up, then enlarged. At least they put the garden in a nice sunny area of the lot.

After tilling the original garden I immediately realized it wasn't going to be big for what I wanted to grow.

Donna and I dug up the weeds outside and behind the garden as a perfect spot for our enlargement. 

We then used a post hole digger and set 10' poles in cement last fall before the ground froze for our future deer fence.

We decided to build "above" ground furrows, before the winter froze the soil, and at the advice of my brother Jack put straw down to walk and kneel upon...great idea. I mixed in copious amounts of horse manure, leaves and pine needles figuring in a few years we will have excellent some soil.

A must do project was digging up the blackberry vines that the past owners must of thought were a good idea within the garden. The two types of shrubs are a thorny and thornless blackberries plants, I did leave a few of the thornless plants at the request of Donna but got rid of all the ones with thorns. I have seen acres and acres of wild thorny blackberry shrubs choking many farms in Oregon and Washington...I'd rather that didn't happen here.

We wanted the garden to have it's own dedicated water so a one inch waterline was tapped next to the garage that ran out to the front yard.

From the valve, I am running the water line just inside the soon to be hung deer fence.

One last step to getting the irrigation inside the garden is this manifold...more later.

Ok, time to tackle the deer fence. Because we are on a fixed income I chose a cheap 7 foot plastic mesh that is nearly invisible.

Here I am using large tents stakes to secure the bottom of the net, deer are known to try and go under a fence rather than over. The plastic strips tied to the fence are my effort to warn the deer that there is something here because it's so hard to see.

The main trunk for a 1/2 inch water line runs under one of my walkways, because it is an area I know we won't be digging up any time soon in order to till the soil, I won't be piercing water lines in the process.

All three lines will be buried a few inches below a walkway.

After replacing the soil and straw, other than the water lines sticking up, you'd never know what was underneath. In the back ground you can see all the plastic white strips that might just give the deer a height goal to reach for?

I have 15 rows for planting and 3 waterlines so the average is one waterline for 5 rows. Each row has it's own valve so I can adjust how much water different plants will need.

This is the central 3 valve manifold. Each line goes to a section of the garden and from there, more valves are used to adjust water flow.

All 15 mounds are now piped and ready for irrigation but the only problem is I can't test for another two weeks. Neighbors have cautioned me against turning on outside water valves until April 7th...because of the chance of minor freezing.

I spent the better part of a day trying to find an inexpensive way of keeping the stiff vinyl line laying fairly straight on top of the mounds, all the manufactured items were too much money. I came across a bright idea to just buy a roll of stiff wire and cut U shape anchors to my own specifications for pennies on the dollar. 

It worked well enough to keep the lines near the center of the mounds. I will run 1/4 inch poly off the main trunk to each plant so it doesn't have to be perfectly on the top but near to the center is good.

Our very first veggie are onions because they can survive down to 20 degrees which shouldn't be a problem this time of the year.

These sets are from brother Jack in San Diego including Walla Walla's, Texas Sweet, Red Sweet and Georgia Sweet should get a good start with our forecasted showers for the next 5 days and mid 50 days.

The ground is now soft enough to set out our christmas gift from Donna's sister, Trish.

Nothing makes a great day working in the garden better than a shower, glass of wine and sitting outside on the patio...:-)

Driving back into Spokane to visit with Donna I saw a fleeting glimpse of a figure on the side of  Hwy 395 near Deer Park (not aptly named) and as passing realized there is no fence...so what was it? I had to turn around and was blow away at the sight of a moose that must of had a "pinto horse" as a father. I don't know if this moose was old, grey, part albino or just plain scroungy! 

Donna immediately named him/her "Moonstruck Moose"!