We are on the latter part of this HUGE project.. project veggie garden.  Deb and I both have said that we didn’t think this garden would take this long.  Ha.  And lots of people over on social media say that they can’t believe we got this much done so fast.  Maybe when you are actually the ones doing it, it seems to drag.  I must say that this project got bigger and bigger as time went on.  We knew we were going to do a lot out here but I’m not sure we thought we would do it all right now.  Nonetheless, it’s been fun creating this area.  This past week, we happened to walk into a nearby Rural King to grab some bedding for the chickens.  One of the workers stopped and said, “I just announced that we dropped all of the prices on the garden center items.  We want them all gone.  You can get everything from 50 cents – $2.00.”  We decided to pay a visit out there before we shopped and I’m glad we did.  We found a lot of things.  Our clearance shrub haul for the garden was a whopping $11.77.  Yes, you read that right.

We got them planted a few days back.  So, I wanted to share just a few of them and show you where we planted them.

Our Clearance Shrub Haul for the Garden

We wanted our picket fence to have landscaping around it.  Most of our property has boxwoods and hydrangeas which are our favorite combination.  We love hydrangeas because they remind me of old farmhouses.  And, boxwoods are soft leaved shrubs that look great lined around gardens, etc.  It’s what we planted by the little garage a few years back. It only made sense to take that same look out to the veggie garden area.

Deb found several boxwoods on a huge clearance sale at Walmart the beginning of last week.  She got a bunch of them for $5.  We planned on putting those around the chicken run and sprucing that area up a bit, too. Then the Rural King incident happened and we got even more.  That haul consisted of 2 small hydrangeas, several more boxwoods, 2 forsythia plants, 2 butterfly bushes, and more.  Later that day, Deb stopped at Tractor Supply and saw that they had trees for 50% off.  So she grabbed an apple tree along with a crab apple tree as a companion for cross pollinating.  

We got most of our clearance shrubs planted this past weekend. The ones in the front of the garden are the boxwoods lining the steps and a butterfly bush on each side of the front columns.  I am excited to see what all of this looks like once they grow a bit.

Head to your local garden centers!

I wanted to share all of this….because now is the time to go to your local garden center to see if they have their plants marked down yet.  This is what we did every time we had a flip house.  We watched for the 50-75% off sales and grabbed almost everything they had.  You can really save a lot of money by doing that.

What is left to do in this entire area?

•  Finish the top of the entrance by adding a pergola type look to the columns
• Complete the landscaping around the front with sun-loving hydrangeas
• We bought 2 more Vego beds for the garden.  There is a method to our madness.
• Make a lane out of packing stone back to this area
• Add a roof to the chicken run – It currently has a tarp.  Ha!
• Get our fountain up and running in that area – We hope we can get it to work.
• Attach the gate on the back stair steps to the garden
• Mulch the beds all around this area
• Plant a berry patch behind the coop with blue berries, blackberries and raspberries
• Add a greenhouse – This is something that we just decided to do.  Stay tuned.

As you can see, we are well over half done with this area, but have a long way to go.  I have been putzing around in the garden tending to our vegetables between working on the big stuff.  Which I will be sharing a lot more of as well.  I want to do companion planting, etc, to make the most of our beds.  We are just late to the ballgame this year.

See how we filled our vegetable garden beds!

Let me know if you find anything exciting in your garden centers to plant in your own space.