Last week I started to work in the garden. Yes, we have a garden. There's just no fruit or vegetables growing there. Yet.
The plan is to have the backyard all set by the early part of Spring so we can have a garden of the fruit & vegetable nature.
First goal, to remove the never ending ground cover. (See photos) This stuff is insane.
It is not true ice-plant, but it is very similar in that it retains a lot of water and seems to grow in any soil condition with little to no water - I really don't know how this stuff does it, but it does. It also just continuously grows over itself year after year. Thus the amount of plant under the green part is usually very surprising and a lot more than you would imagine. Oh, and don't get me started on the roots!
While removing the first small section of this stuff I also removed two more rose bushes that had grown through
the pots they had been sitting if for a long time, (roots well over an inch and a half thick, so yeah, a really long time). I also unearthed a 'dead' irrigation system that was about a foot below the soil and a series of 4 x 4 pieces of wood that were/are sunk about 2 feet deep. I am not sure what they were for, but I am guessing there was once a trellis of some sort there. So far I have removed two of at least 5 that I know of.
After the ground cover was removed and two more of the root-bound rose bushed were removed I turned over the soil and added some organic materials such as coffee grounds, plant clippings, apple left overs and banana peels. The goal is to start composting to help amend the rather poor soil we have here.
I guess it is fair to say we have officiall started gardening. I am hopeful that if I keep knocking out a little bit each week, by the time planting season hits for Spring of 2011 we can get strawberry plants in and maybe a few other things.