Prepping the Garden Boxes

A couple years ago we decided to start a vegetable garden. It wasn’t going to be anything large and unmanageable, just a couple boxes for raised beds and a few pots for herbs. A friend of ours, who lived in an apartment, asked if she could also put in a couple boxes for her and her nieces to use, which seemed perfectly logical as we had the space, and she was going to pay half. Her and I put the boxes together in a matter of minutes, as we had them precut at the Home Depot, and they were each 4’x4’. So we arranged them where we had planned, and had her nephews haul all of the garden soil up to fill each box.

Well, after two seasons of gardening, our friend said we could have her two boxes, as she was now in an apartment that had a small yard. So instead of cleaning them out back in October when most everything was dead and done producing, I left it. My fall planting of peas never produced any peas, and this made me sad, as I had devoted an entire box to them, and this may have left me wanting to forget the whole affair.

And then it became January out of nowhere, and the boxes are still looking like something from the Addams Family, so I decided it is time to take action and start pulling out the dead and decaying stuff. This, of course, made the chickens go crazy, and they immediately jumped in the freshly cleaned-out boxes in hopes of finding delicious munches and crunches, which they found aplenty.

We compost all of our vegetable scraps, as well as the straw, shavings and chicken poop in a compost bin, and use that to fertilize the garden boxes, as well as the roses and flowers. I will talk about composting in another post, as it really does require more than a one-line mention!

Okay, so I completely cleaned out three of the boxes, and get to mine, which I have to be careful because I specifically planted stuff in mine to be harvested later. I have leeks growing in one corner of the box, as they are a winter harvest vegetable, and a few are quite beautiful and ready to be made into Potato Leek Soup. I also have fennel, which I thought may have not made it, so I pulled off the dead foliage and found a lot of bulbs attached. I replanted the small bulbs and hope that they come back this spring, as from what I’ve read about fennel, it takes two years to fully mature. Another fun fact about fennel is that the entire plant can be used in cooking: The bulb can be sliced and sautéed; the stems can be used like celery; the fronds can be used like dill; and the seeds can be used as a spice. Well, I didn’t do enough reading to find out whether or not to cut off the stem portion and use it right after it goes to seed, so instead it went to waste. Oh well, this is all a learning process. Anyway, enough of that. After I finished cleaning out my box, I put a few tomato cages around the fennel bulbs and leeks to keep the chickens out of that part of the box, and started cleaning out a couple of the herbs in pots, the annuals. The perennial herbs (thyme, sage, oregano, parsley, scallions, and chives) I just trimmed off any dead foliage.

Success! Our garden boxes have been cleaned out and in late February we’ll start the garden season over again. Of course, with them all cleaned out, I wonder if I should put the compost in the boxes a couple weeks before planting and allow the chickens to fully scratch it in? I think I will.