Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

The peas are coming up strong this spring. This image of the peas in raised Vegetable Bed #2 is from this morning (Tuesday 2014 May 13th).
Note yet another experiment in a structure for the peas to climb up. Each rack is a build of three 2″x2″x8′ wood along with two 3.5″ nuts and bolts, some screws and some latticework.
The vegetable bed itself is 12″ deep, giving us a good soil depth, less distance to go when bending over to weed or inspect, excellent drainage if it rains too much, faster heating in the daytime and cooling at night. We may still end up putting in soaker hose into the bed and feeding it from two rainbarrels farther up by the house.

This is an image of a buried 3″x5″ mini garden tie, under the fenced gate and a little wire as well, to keep the critters, especially rabbits out of the inner yard.
So far it as been working very well. Not one rabbit has come under the gates as they did in the past.

The last image below is of the garlic plot, planted in 2013 October. They are coming along well.
The back half of the plot is the fallowed bed, with 9 bags of sheep manure and 2 more yards of dirt, to bring up the depth of the soil.

We’ve been happy with the earth supplier for a couple of years now. Better quality than some, pricing is so so $37/yard for triple (garden) mix and $50 for delivery. For the past 10 years we’ve been getting 15 yards give or take and this year we only picked up 5 yards. Mostly for vegetable bed topup, as we are not planning on constructing any new vegetable beds this year.