Garden expansion project – Part 5 – Wrap up
May 6, 2018Just about done and ready to wrap up
The past two weekends have been a whirlwind of task completion. Being blessed with great weather, we were able to really grind outside and get a ton accomplished. The Sun Joe cultivator really kicked butt and made short work of turning over the earth in our new garden space. Thanks to Wire Cloth Manufacturers we got a pretty sweet deal on our hardware cloth and fence posts.
Now that the leaf babies and seeds are planted it’s time to step back and take a look at how we did in our final wrap up post on our garden expansion project.
Looking back
It’s been a long five months. Before we wrap up we want to take a quick look into how we got here. Based on the title you can see that there are four more posts in this project and a seed post in the blog here the most important links in case you’ve not been following along (we didn’t expect you to anyway).
- Our end of year blog post on gardening goals for the new year – this is where we decided we were going to expand the garden and set some initial goals and strategies for our 2018 season.
- Garden Expansion Project Part 1 – estimation – before we got too ambitious we wanted to think about what it was going to take to make it all happen and figure out if we were going to have the time and money.
- Garden Expansion Project Part 2 – planning – once we figured out what we were going to need, we laid everything out to make sure we could stay on track.
- Garden Expansion Project Part 3 – start planting – ah sweet execution, February might have been a little early to start, but we really needed to DO SOMETHING.
- Garden Expansion Project Part 4 – time to get dirty – the small stuff is just as important as the big stuff, but for a gardener doesn’t it just feel so good to get dirt under your fingernails?
We also wrote a couple spin-off articles that helped us along the way
- Product review for our new Sun Joe tiller – we were so impressed by this inexpensive little tool we were compelled to write about how well it did.
- Where do you get your garden supplies – while we were shopping we thought we’d ask our twitter friends where they shop…. and we opened a little garden shop of our own using our online wishlist
- Garden Calendar – gave us a way to set up some reminders about things we should be doing all year in the garden (and outside the garden too) and when they become important.
So to wrap up that’s eight articles and a couple of new site features to cover about four month’s work in strategy, estimating, planning, execution and status. This really kept our early spring fever at bay while we fantasized about gardening during the cold winter months.
Completing the build
Putting up a fence for the first time ever with no experience was a little challenging. With a little help, we were able to get provisionally complete in about a day. Provisionally… A mentor of ours once said “don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress” when we were trying to get something done but taking WAY too long because we were trying to make it extra great. After a little reading and research we found out that this comes from the writer Voltaire who wrote “better is the enemy of good”. He meant that everything in life can always be made better, but sometimes, good enough is… well, good enough. With that in mind and being pragmatic at heart, we took a good enough approach at getting the fence in. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it also gives us some ideas for making it better at the end of the season.
So far, with the help of the neighbor’s outdoor cat, the furry beasts have yet to be seen in the garden pen.
Planting
Putting plants in the ground is the best feeling. Sadly, some of the starts and seedlings did not make it through the hardening process. There was a mini heat wave here last week and only about 4/5 survived the strong sun and dry wind. We had plenty of seed left over, so it’s not too much drama, but it’s always sad to lose a leaf baby. We spent about 6 hours digging and planting and getting soil under our fingernails yesterday and today the plants are getting a nice drink from a rainy morning and late afternoon – what a way to wrap up planting.
Now for the real wrap up
Setting a goal and making a plan are the first steps to accomplishing anything. In going through this process we’ve achieved a few things:
- A nice sized vegetable garden
- Experience in cultivating and fencing a plot
- A whole bunch of information YOU can use to make your own garden
- Touch points on what went well and where we can improve next time
Our garden expansion project has been a really fun process and we’re so excited to see how our garden grows over the summer. Until the next project comes – keep reading our blog see what events are happening in our garden calendar read up on all your favorite garden bloggers in our news feed and have a look at what interesting garden products we’ve found over in the garden shop.
