Mulch Day!

Today is mulch day. I started yesterday. We're lining the space in-between the beds with landscape fabric and then getting free mulch from our city to pour on top. Pretty much, our goal is for us to be able to leave the upper garden alone, except for tending to our vegetables. I don't want to be spending our time and energy trying to pick little tiny weeds out from in-between the rocks (since there was some large gravel-- not enough-- on the top of the top tier).

Haven't decided what to do on the slope yet for the strawberries. Sawdust or coffee chaff in-between the plants? You need it to be something light so the plants can send down additional roots and wanderers. I hate weeding that slope. One step at a time though, right?

And, there are reasons why we aren't building a fence or stairs today.

For the stairs, I priced out the cost of stair cut-outs from Home Depot (underlying support thingies), and it takes 2, $25 cut-outs to make FIVE STAIRS. We're going to need at least 10 stairs, probably more like 12. So, that puts us at $125, just for the darn cut-out thingies. That's not considering the price of 4x4s or 2x6's or stain or cement or anything. I'd rather do that project when I know exactly what it will cost and when I have coupons and I've price-shopped around town (since Home Depot will match and beat by 10%).

For the garden fence, it's mostly for the same reasons (not having been priced out, no coupons, no comparison price shopping), but also because Bob and I haven't finished figuring out the design, AND we might be putting in a bed for asparagus somewhere. I'd hate to put a fence in and then kick ourselves. You'd think finding space for a 25' long bed would be easy. It's not.