T Stands for The Veggie Garden

 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday, or since I like to post early, Happy Monday night. It is time once again for T over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog . 

Last week I mentioned my love-hate relationship with my veggie garden, and  today I wanted to share  the rest of my veggie garden project which is now done.  Hurrah! 

 You might remember how last week I mentioned that  while planting the garden, I ran out of coconut mulch. This mulch was something new I was trying in my veggie garden to keep in moisture and hold back the weeds. I went out and picked up enough coconut mulch  to finish off the areas around my peppers and tomatoes. I wanted to cover a few more areas of the garden, but I ran out of mulch again. (And I'm not going to buy any more at this point either.)

You can see the new mulch is much finer than the first mulch I bought.  You buy coconut mulch in little cubes and then expand it with water in a wheelbarrow or bucket. The finer mulch came in smaller cubes, and it was more expensive than the bigger chip style mulch. (But then I bought each mulch at different places so that may not be generally true.) Both cubes expanded a lot, especially the finer mulch. I went with finer mulch this time because I thought this would be a good test to see which, if either of these mulches,  keeps the weeds down the best. I will keep you posted as the summer progresses.

I also had another veggie garden project I was doing. My other  project was to make a raised bed outside of the actual garden where I could plant cucumbers and squash. When we first established the veggie garden, the area received more sunshine. Then this spindly little sugar maple grew into a big but  very lovely tree. My husband wants to cut it down, but I like the tree too much to do that. 

Now half the garden gets sunshine all day, and half only gets it part of the day.  Not enough sun for getting lots of cukes and squashes.

Last fall I measured out a space and laid down some weed barrier where I wanted to put this raised bed. You can tell the weed barrier was useless as it is all puffed up from weeds growing under it. This spot gets almost all day sunshine. My husband has been rolling his eyes at me ever since telling me last fall that this  was a monster sized garden bed. (You can tell he is not a gardener, but more about that later in the post.) We had some spare lumber, so I asked him to cut  the wood for the sides of the bed last weekend. He did it, but he did more eye rolling too.

One day last week I assembled the sides and started moving the bags of soil I have been collecting every time I took a trip to a garden center in the last few months. That was hard work, as  the bags were in the driveway and I had to move them uphill. And 2 bags  had mini holes in them,so after a day with LOTS of rain, the soil was so wet the bag weighed twice what it did when I bought it. 

I planted my squash and cucumber seedlings and used some of the coconut mulch on top to keep the weeds down. 

Here's the finished bed. I also put some netting over it that is hard to see in the photo, and thank goodness I did. Later that day there was a woodchuck/groundhog right next to the garden.  I know he/she was just lusting after those fresh seedlings. (I'd lost them before to woodchucks and chipmunks.) I just hope the woodchuck can't eat through the netting.

And when my husband "inspected" the new finished garden bed, he told me that it makes the perfect size for what I want to plant in it.  After all that eye rolling, thanks  for your support dear. 😑

 I have never spent so much time getting my veggie garden going, but it was my big garden goal for the year. I wanted to be able to check that off the list, and hurrah, I did. Let's hope it produces enough veggies to make up for all the time and work (and money) I put into it.

Since it is T day I need a drink photo. 

Here's my jug of water that I take out into the garden with me.

And you can see I also take the jug with me to other places, like out onto my screen porch so I can enjoy it while in my hammock. 

This jug is made by the Life Is Good company, who I am NOT advertising for. I love the sticker looking design that covers this jug. If you aren't familiar with Life Is Good, the company makes lots of casual clothing, including Life Is Good T shirts.  The shirts have images on them, and all the images on my water jug come off of various shirts they have made. I like their T shirts and wear the ones I have a lot in the summer. 

This post has become long enough. Thank you for visiting. And of course, have a great T day and week ahead also.