The Garden Experiment - June

June Update:

It has been HOT here and everything is still following trend by being a few weeks early.  The heat has caused my spinach, arugula, and lettuce to Bolt.  So much for salads all summer long.  I harvested virtually all of it and gave a several bunches away to some of my coworkers.

Blueberries are perhaps my absolute favorite plant in the garden.  I'm an Oregon native so what can I say.  I have a total of 14 plants, 4 of which are mature, and 10 that are 1 and 3 years old.  Suffice to say in a few years I will expect to triple my harvest of them.  Currently they about pace the appetites of my family as they only last a couple of days around here.

Asparagus is done, which is sad but bearable when it gets replaced by things like berries!

As far as the current top performers of value per square foot things have definitely changed: 

Lettuce: $7.74 per SF

Garlic: $7.30 per SF

Arugula: $3.15 per SF

Rhubarb: $2.93 per SF

Artichoke: $2.75 per SF

Asparagus: $1.33 per SF

Everything on this list however is more or less tapped our for the season.  With Blueberries only about half way through and Green Beans, Squash, and tomatoes all left to ripen we will see how it all transpires.  

Berries are priceless when you have a 2 year old that can eat them off the bush.  Currently just keeping pace with her voracious appetite!

First year ever growing garlic.  Success.  Even cleaned and braided to dry.

Tomatoes are only a few weeks away!  Have planted more varieties and plants than ever.  Optimistic, especially with this heat

Cherries have been an absolute failure!  Birds take one peck out of them just about 2 days before ripe.  Ants finish them off.  It is a sad sight.  I have only gotten about 10 total!

the Back Deck

It was still summer and the year 2013, when we worked on the back deck. What month exactly? I've lost complete track. Either way, our back deck was small (roughly 3' deep by 6' long) and falling apart. The neighbors cats were using it as a scratching post, which also didn't help matters. With an almost crawling baby, we decided it was time to design and invest in a new deck.

We spent a few nights designing a new deck, went shopping at Parr Lumber and I convinced the hubs that it would be a lot less maintenance to go with a synthetic wood product. He was totally against this, until we had Ava. Thankfully he came around and admits that less maintenance around the house is a good thing, and more time back on the weekends to doing family things, like hiking! 

The new deck design had to have a few additional elements, as well. It needed to be large enough to put a BBQ on and functionally use, provide additional seating for our mini backyard, and shield the monster air conditioning unit.

With the help of the guys at Parr, we ordered up the materials and enlisted a few very skilled work friends to come help us knock it out in a weekend. I'm forever grateful for their help, as I was more or less on baby watch and let the boys play with all the tools (I honestly, was bummed and hate not being part of the action!) I should also add that the hubs did all the demo himself. The decaying deck took about five minutes, but below it was solid CMU block! I'd like to talk to whoever thought that was a good idea...

Here goes:

Existing Deck Demo, no tools required.

CMU Demo… notice the scratch marks in the two white posts?

More Demo...

Head Supervisor for the Day

Final Product, with one piece of handrail missing (but since installed)