This week was supposed to be the amazing reveal of our new kitchen shelves. But. Problems. And not even with the part where we were expecting problems, so that was too bad. Anyway, there’s some regrouping happening there, but we’re hoping for progress this weekend.

So we worked on the garden last weekend instead. It’s more time sensitive anyway, so it’s probably for the best. I think maybe Ikea made crappy shelves on purpose just because they knew we should be planting a garden. Yeah. More on that later.

Anyway, so we’ve been meaning to put up a fence around the garden area since last spring, and we finally did it! Mostly for keeping the dogs from digging in the garden beds. My original vision involved an adorable little picket fence with pretty flower bushes planted on the outside of it, but then, after we spent a year envisioning this but not actually making it, we decided to go for something easier and cheaper.

It’s not beautiful, but it works, and the materials were somewhere around $70. Also, if we decide to expand it in the future, it will be super easy to do that without crying over how we have to dig more post holes.

Here’s what we bought at Home Depot:

50′ roll of PVC coated garden fence

9 of these posts

bag of T-post clips

fence post driver

We weren’t sure about the fence post driver (which cost around $30, and which I’m not sure when we’ll use again), but Dave tried putting the posts in with just a hammer, and it was way harder that way. The post driver is just a heavy thing with handles that you fit over the post and push down on. It probably helped, too, that this was the first day in awhile with no rain, so the ground was nice and soft.

Anyway, the whole thing was very quick and easy. We made the fence 12′ by 24′ and used the existing wooden fence as one of the long sides. We put the posts in and then wrapped the fencing around them. The posts have built in clips to hold the fence in place, but we also used the t-post clips as needed to reinforce it.

Gus and I are the only ones to short too step over the whole fence easily (well, and Abe) (I’m still taller than Milo, but I guess his legs are longer? Or he’s just more…spry); rather than messing with a gate, Dave just clipped a few spots so we could fold one small section down short enough for me to get over:

Poor dogs! Can’t dig up our garden!

Historically, I’m an enthusiastic spring gardener and a terrible summer gardener, but maybe the new fence will motivate me. Or maybe the kids’ enthusiasm for gardening will. If it lasts.

They found a worm:

Gus helped me pick out seeds. We planted all the early spring stuff (maybe too late), and I stared tomato seeds, but I still need to figure out later season stuff (soon!)

They had seed potatoes at Home Depot, so we grabbed some and planted them in the big washtub I bought at a yard sale awhile back:

This will be the third summer for the cedar raised bed, and it’s holding up fairly well. I put new string on it to mark out one foot square sections:

I have 18 tomato seedlings planted, and whatever of those come up I’m planning to put along the edges of the fence (on the inside). Then I’d like to do a smaller raised bed of all strawberries. And….some other things. Pumpkins? We almost successfully grew a pumpkin last year, but we got too late of a start.