My First Harvest and a Major Project!

This was the first thing I harvested from our garden:

A 'Purple Plum' radish.

A few days later I harvested this:

Some baby spinach leaves, a few basil leaves, some garlic chives and more radishes.

I turned it into a delicious salad for that night's supper.

I harvested more spinach leaves and radishes today.

When we first moved into our house a few years ago we cut down two huge holly bushes next to our front porch (the berries are poisonous and we didn't want to risk our kids eating them).  There was also a small brick planter under our window which wasn't wide enough to really plant anything, but somehow, previous owners had squeezed in three boxwoods.  A stray mimosa tree was also growing there.  So, a few weekends ago, my husband and I tore out the brick planter and dug out the bushes and the tree.  On Tuesday, I used a soaker hose to outline the shape of the bed and turned on the water to make digging easier.  I dug a shallow trench along the hose and put in the border.  Wednesday I laid down newspaper and compost on half of the bed and finished it up today with a layer of cedar mulch.

This is the result:

I plan on using this bed as a flower and herb garden next spring.  For now, I'll use some pots of strawberries and other plants.  I decided that the stumps could just be incorporated into the bed instead of trying to get them out.

This post is part of Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions.