So, if you are wondering where I’ve been…well the answer is Chicago, Michigan, Colorado and Chicago again. Partially vacation, but also for a specific big event that happened for a certain blogger (hints: Not me, blogs on this blog, name sounds like the event). But I’ve also been in the backyard. A lot. Basically, every minute I haven’t been traveling.

And here’s how things are looking now:

Original garden box, with tomato and pepper seedlings, herbs, lettuce and violas. Tomato and pepper pots along the garage. And a happy dog in a her favorite sunny spot.

New garden beds, with mulch surrounding them, and a row of vining melons and squashes along the side. You can see where we’re already having squirrel problems in the front.

And, as a bonus, I tackled the front of the house too, filling the numerous flower boxes and pulling out weeds. We had so many weeds and vines (including poison ivy and belladonna, which is poisonous) I had to call a service to come do a pick up. And beg my landlord to take the cost off my rent.

So, now that the vast amounts of physical labor are done (seriously: building the boxes, making all the trips to get dirt, mulch and plants in my little car, lining everything with paper and filling with dirt and mulch, planting, weeding, weeding and more weeding — It took for ever. Probably about 60 hours between my time and the upstairs tenant’s), I’ll hopefully be back to blogging with less emphasis on gardening, and more of what this blog was supposed to be about — Homemade food and crafts!

This week is our Spring Garbage Pickup in my neighborhood (we have weekly pickup, of course, but this is the big week for yard waste and large items that don’t fit in the bins), so I’ve been busy cleaning out the alley (which was disgusting), raking up the leaves, acorns and twigs that littered the yard, and trying to eliminate the weeds that have already taken over last year’s garden patch.

Last year’s garden, overrun with squash and weeds

This year’s blank slate

I’ve decided to add some raised beds this year to help keep the weeds at bay and keep my veggies from overrunning each other (last year the squash gave all the other veggies too much competition for sunlight). I’m also doing a bit of rearranging, now that I have a better understanding of the sunlight in each part of the yard.

The sunniest patch of the yard is actually the strip right alongside the garage and where the existing 4 x 8 foot raised bed sits. Last year, I filled this box with herbs and lettuce, but as lettuce can do with a little less sun, I’ve decided to promote the most sun-loving veggies to this part of the yard. My tomatoes did pretty well in a shadier part of the yard last year, but they were much slower than everyone else’s, so they are getting a little promotion. My cucumbers and peppers did pretty poorly, so we’re going to try out a sunnier spot for them too.

I’ve decided to try out a square-foot gardening approach this year, so here’s the plan for the first box:

Then along the sunnier side of last year’s vegetable patch, I’m putting in three 4 x 6 ft boxes (the size was determined by the length of board that can fit in my tiny car).

Then, on the other side of veggie patch, I’m going to plan the vining vegetables and fruits — melon, zucchini, acorn squash, pumpkin and butternut. Last year the squash thrived on this side of the yard, while it wasn’t quite enough sun for the other vegetables. Plus, this way, the vines can go crazy without the risk of suffocating the eggplant or celery like last year.

I’m also planning to use some freestanding pots along the side of the garage, for additional tomato plants and possibly peppers. And rosemary — I regret not planting last year’s rosemary in a pot I could bring inside.

How do you decide what to plant where? Any plants that need maximum sun that I missed?

Since I can sense spring coming, just around the corner (even though it’s freezing today), I thought I’d finally share some of the lessons I learned from last year’s garden.

Our garden was a rather large (14 x 27 feet) reclaimed portion of the yard that had previously been a giant weed patch. I think before it was a weed patch it might have had some trees and shrubs that were cut down because they had been interfering with power lines, but it was definitely not a lawn or garden. The three years I lived in the building prior to our garden effort, it was just a big patch of weeds. My landlord had told me that if we (we being me and the new upstairs neighbors) cleaned out that part of the yard, he would have two raised garden beds put in. We cleaned out the weeds using a tiller and a ridiculous amount of muscle and time, but no boxes were installed. I’m still a little miffed about that. So we ended up putting in a few rows of plants directly into the ground, and used a mix of weed block fabric and mulch to try to ward off the return of the weeds.

It did not go well.

My giant garden and all it’s weeds. You can see in this picture that I was also battling out of control squash vines.

We had the perfect recipe for a never-ending weed battle: Weeds had already claimed that portion of the yard as their home, and they were not going to give it up with out a fight. And, tilling the ground meant that even more weeds had the opportunity to take root.

Our biggest problem was lamb’s ear. It was everywhere. It never stopped coming in, but it was very, very easy to rip it out as it grew. My daily routine became: Come home from work, let the dog out, rip out weeds for a half hour. Not kidding when I say every day. Why didn’t I use weed killer? Well, for one thing, the weeds were literally side by side with my vegetables, and I really did not want to kill the vegetables. For another, I was trying to be mostly organic (I didn’t buy specifically organic plants, so they might have been GMO, but I didn’t use any weed killers or bug killers). With a dog frequently in the garden and a pregnant neighbor upstairs, I didn’t want to risk using chemicals that might be harmful. This year, we’ll have a dog and a soon-to-be-walking baby in the yard, so we’ll be skipping chemicals again.

We also had a severe problem with invasive, hard-to-kill and poisonous weeds. Mullion weed, for example, is insanely hard to rip out. You can cut it back a million times, spend hours trying to dig out the deep, tuberous roots, etc., and that sucker is still going to come back. Same with belladonna, aka deadly nightshade. If you don’t rip out every last bit of vine, it’s coming back. Needless to say, while the mullion is a pain, the nightshade is actually hazard, especially since the baby will be mobile the summer. She’s really cute, so I suspect my neighbors don’t want her eating poison foliage or berries.

Mullion – a hard to kill weed

So what am I going to do? The first order of business is to finally get the raised beds in. We had one last year (previously installed by my landlord in a different part of the yard), and there were almost no weeds in it. My plan for the garden part of the yard is to do a thorough raking and remove all the debris from last year’s efforts as soon as the snow is finally gone. Then I’m going to put down a fairly solid layer of newspaper (I’ve been saving my junk mail for this purpose), and a thick layer of wood chips. This was pretty good for controlling weeds in some portions of the garden last year. I’m hoping that and fresh dirt in the raised beds, will keep the worst of the weeds and proliferation of lambs ear down.

Our almost weed-free raised bed.

I’m also going to try to attack the areas where I know there’s nightshade and mullion early this year and stop the problem before it starts. Part of the issue last year was that I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Now I do, so hopefully I can get a jump on it.

If you’re an experienced gardener, I’d love to know how you keep weeds in check — especially in new gardens where they might have already established themselves. Any tips?