Garden work out

We've never worked so hard at the garden before.  Today was the day we did major work at the garden.  After Pete used the rototiller yesterday, we went back there today to clear up the land of the dried weeds and also manually removed those stubborn weeds.  And oh how they make us work.  These weeds are incredible.  They take such a short time to grow and their roots grow so deep into the ground.  We really have to dig deep to pull their roots out or else they will soon grow back.

We still have a lot of space that is not utilised and so the weeds decided to take root there.  We tried our best to till as much as the ground as we could and remove as many weeds as possible.  And that was just part of the list of things to be done.

We also had to put up a new fence at the front of our plot.  The old fence that was there was falling off and only half of it was left.  Last week we tore down the remnants of the fence and we had only enough material to put up half of the length.  Today, we finished up the rest of it and it looks nice and neat now.  That took awhile since we had to hammer some metal poles deep into the hard ground and then fasten chicken wire to them. 

Then it was more hammering.  We finally got around to building our planting beds.  The ready made ones are so expensive.  We bought our own planks of wood and cut them to size.  With the money we spent, we were able to get two 2m x 1.3m beds, which would not even buy us one ready made planter which is much smaller.  Pete helped to hold the wood in place while I hammered away. 

Then we had to fill the beds with more soil and that took more hard work.  We had to keep on tilling and removing weeds and stones that were all over the garden.  The bending and squatting and lifting all gave us a really good workout for the whole body.  But the weather was very cool and I hardly broke a sweat. 

Once the beds were ready, we watered them and then in one, I planted two rows of peas and two rows of beans.  The pea shoots that were planted earlier had shown a lot of growth but they didn't seem to grow much the past few days.  After a closer inspection, I noticed that the leaves looked like they were eaten.  Rabbits!  They have been eating from our garden!  So this time, luckily his mum brought some garden fleece.  We covered the whole bed to protect the seeds from the wind, birds and rabbits.

In another bed, we planted a few rows of carrots and a few types of lettuces.  Again, we covered them with the fleece.  I noticed other plots had them as well, so I'm hoping they would work.  Once we're done with the last round of watering and packing up, we realised we've been working at the garden for 3 hours.  Luckily the sun wasn't too strong or else we would have been burnt.

We still have other things to do at the garden.  We have to continue to till and get rid of the weeds.  We have to level the soil after the tilling.  We have to plant some more potatoes.  And I want to plant some flowers and herbs along the edges of the plot.  I don't want to leave the ground empty for the weeds to take over.  I have already started sowing some flower seeds in my balcony.  Hopefully they will be ready to be transplated soon.  Hopefully soon, our garden would look a bit more alive and I don't mean with weeds!