Garden Redesign and Transformation: Part II - the messy middle

Why projects take longer than you think

Have you ever set out on a project full of enthusiasm and then it’s just way harder than you thought . . .but you are midway through so what now? Quitting isn’t an option. The reward of finishing is huge. But the middle is slow and well, just hard. And dam why isn’t this going faster.

That’s been me - still in the transformation stage of resetting my garden to be more functional and easier to maintain (I sure hope) after its humble inception some 10 years ago.

If you missed the start of this project, you can see all the beginning details here:

For ease of conversation I’ll pull some of the start photos forward.

I left off this story with just one trellis in and two to go. I find my 4 foot planting stick is ideal for setting row widths and getting the alignment I want with the trellis panel running down the middle of the row.

The process of spacing trellis rows

I covered seeding and transplanting in this post that you can access here (videos at the end are for paid subscribers only):

Seeding and Transplanting Methods That Keep Your Garden Producing All Season Long

It was a wonderful feeing to get the tomatoes all in - but then I turned around and there was a huge mess to clean up still (Which I am still working on even this weekend!)

All three tomato trellises planted and the big mess to deal with in the rest of the garden

Just 8 days later the second row of tomatoes now looks like this:

Table tomatoes 8 days after transplanting

So now the obvious task is to do some weeding, top dress the plants and the mulch them in. I haven’t yet decided what I will do with my pathways, but the goal is to not let them revert back to grass. We will see how doable that is in reality.

And remember that grassy row near the greenhouse (the first picture in this post)? It now looks like this:

Row with green zucchini, broccoli and cabbage with pallet planter boxes in the background

I dug out the grass (except for the part under that greenhouse edge - that I will have to cover over) - and planted it with green zucchinis, and some more broccoli and cabbage. In the background you can see my first try at making one pallet planters. I will give you the details on those next week.

Why great projects take so long

The thing is, I didn’t set out to make pallet planter boxes. And I told myself that in just a couple of weekends the garden would be planted and “finished” - with all those extra steps of weeding and mulching done. Nope.

Because it took me most of one Saturday just to do some hose repairs and set up the connection to the irrigation. It’s hard to garden on this scale without water!

Every step along the way, my intention to get the garden in “fast” was railroaded by important steps that made sense. And new ideas have come along that have changed my perspective on how I want the garden to look when I am done.

And entirely new ideas have entered the scene - like these new heirloom beans I want to grow this year that have just arrived. For my Canadian readers - I got these from The Superior Gardener in Ontario (not an affiliate link - I just like to support small scale growers doing amazing things).

San Bernardo (blue), True Red Cranberry (red), and Fort Portal Jade (green) heirloom beans for fresh and dried bean production

And isn’t that just the magic of gardening and Substack?

Paula Cristobal

posted this note (below) on Substack and suddenly I was in the hunt for BLUE Italian beans. And I’ve been trying to figure out where in the garden to put them ever since LOL.

This is getting long and the sunshine is calling me out to the garden so I am going to leave you here. More garden transformation stories to come as I get the two remaining steel 4x4 beds positioned and planted, and test out those one pallet boxes. I’ll give you the details on those next week.

In the meantime, happy gardening!

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The Naturalized Human is about reclaiming our health and wellness through a deep connection to our food and environment. I bring together the latest science with years of experience growing food to offer insight into our mind-body-food connection. Don’t miss a letter by becoming a free or paid subscriber.