I was off today, and instead of sitting around the house doing nada (which is what I really wanted to do) I mowed the lawn. Our neighbors mowed their lawn yesterday, and ours was looking pretty scraggly, so I decided to mow the lawn for hubby. Mind you, I had ulterior motives....
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I thought I needed to move my garden because it wasn't getting enough sunlight. The spot where my garden sits has trees and underbrush on the east side, and a barn on the north side. The garden is shady in the morning and starts getting sun at midday, but now that the trees on the west side of our house have leaves, the garden starts getting shade in the late afternoon. So we've got a window of about 4 hours of direct sunlight. Definitely not enough sunshine, and I think it's the reason my lettuce plants haven't grown one iota since they went in the garden. (They're on the right side of the far back/right box)
I never pulled the trigger on moving the boxes, because I really like the spot it's in. It's accessible and noticeable, yet out of the way. Plus I already have my tomato plants and sugar snap peas growing up the trellis. I didn't want to have to unwind those veggies before a move, reset the trellis and then reweave. And I don't think my sugar snap peas would have tolerated that move since they're blooming/bearing fruit.
The other alternative to moving the boxes was to thin out the trees and underbrush on the east side of the boxes to let more sun shine in. I'd pretty much decided that's what I wanted to do, but I couldn't convince my hubby to get out there and do it. That's where mowing the lawn came in - by mowing the lawn I thought I'd be able to score enough brownie points to get my honey to volunteer to trim the brush and cut down some of the larger trees. It worked! This evening he was really happy that I mowed, and after I fixed him a yummy dinner, he changed clothes, got out the chain saw and started cutting. He was able to successfully lay the trees down behind the boxes without damaging anything.
Wow! The amount of light that it let in from cutting down that stuff is amazing. I can't wait to see my garden in the morning. My little lettuces should be rejoicing at all the sunlight they're going to get.
I didn't get to take any "after" photos tonight because we were busy cleaning up the limbs and leaves. I'll take some tomorrow and post them.
The barn on the north side of my garden.
The forest on the other side of my boxes.
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