We Turned an Abandoned Corner into a Secret Garden

Of all the seasons that get rushed out the door before they've even had a chance to be lived in, I think summer gets it the worst. Halloween decor is already out before we've even made it to August and somehow we are already being told to think about fall. But while stores are pushing us towards another season, we are very much still living in summer. Let's get this secret garden finished. If you missed last week's video, we are working on turning this weedy forgotten corner in the woods into an immersive garden. This area will eventually lead to the new chicken fence, but we didn't want it to be just any walkway. Our plans involve lots of shade plants, a water feature, a natural pathway, and a beautiful gate, but first we have to get the fence done. Did you cut this or was it already this size? It's already that size. Oh. Just laying on the ground. I love using kind of some scrap wood. That looks pretty straight. Do you think it needs to go any way? I think it needs to go over at the bottom. That way? Yeah. I guess we could um get the level. This might make it harder or easier too. There's been tricks. I'm like, I'm locked out. I don't know if you can tell, but this ground is sloped and so we've had a long conversation if we were going to do the fence angled or straight and just have like a higher side and a lower side or if we were going to do like a step down that was like you know higher here lower on that one. What I don't want is a one diagonal piece like that. Yeah. I don't. We ruled that one out. Yeah. The fence itself is diagonal with the ground like it just goes level with the ground so then it's not really actually level with the earth with gravity, but we we had to do that because we need the fence to be really secure on the ground. But we will do the wood. It's gonna look level. Not diagonal. But we just haven't decided on I mean I think we're gonna try the step down one. Yeah. I don't love that but we're gonna try it. The other option honestly when you look at it doesn't look that. It doesn't. Like if you put all the way across like it wouldn't be that much taller. Won't they? We'll see. He's here again. Here. You want to hear him purring? In case you're wondering Hazel chose to be inside. She came outside and then when I had to go get something inside she went in because she doesn't like power tools and. She does not like construction. She does not like a construction site. Me neither Hazel. Yeah. So that's why she's not out here and the cats wouldn't be here if she was here because. If you don't know that they don't. No. She chases cats. The cats. Run from her. And yeah. I think if the cats wouldn't run she wouldn't chase them but because they do that's their that's their relationship and. Yeah so they'll never be in the same place at the same time and sometimes they are they just don't know it. Yeah. And then if they find out the chase ensues. So. I try to keep it from happening. Maybe I should try to like bend it. I don't think this is going to get down this video but imagine the cutest garden gate you've ever seen. Right here. Yeah it didn't taste like anything. It's my finger. It's it's it's just like it's holding on. Yes. Okay. One shorty. Get this one level. Okay. And screw it in and then do the next one and just see what we think. See what the bite. Really the next. This one is going to be like this no matter what. So the next piece we can be like the one it's like the next one. We're gonna need this. That does not look that looks crazy actually. Would you want to start it right at the bottom of this one? Let's see. A little more. You don't like it? I don't know about the stair step they said. I'm like that's not straight. I know it looks way better than when the when that one was up all the way. It looked crazy. Is it is it level? Like if I cut this off of the top. Yeah we could cut that off. I would probably keep it because it would make this short. I mean it'll only be like three inches short. I think it's gonna be good. It'll be fine. It's so trippy. You can really tell how diagonal this is. I know. On camera you can't really tell it looks fine on camera. Do you see the trippiness that we have going on? You can tell oh yeah you can tell how fencing is crooked but the wood is straight. Sure there's a way to have it all lined up real perfectly and go all the way down to the bottom but it's not that serious. That's sort of our motto. You can't really see it. It's really the wood that focuses. So we're not going to worry about how else it could be done. When you're looking at it from afar you and like when there's going to be plants that you're looking at it's going to be like an afterthought. Yeah. I'm not someone who thinks all snacks need to be homemade but I do like when my snacks are made from good ingredients. That's why I'm excited to share with you masa chips. They're made with organic corn cooked in 100% grass-fed beef tallow and seasoned with sea salt and other real ingredients. I especially love this day use organic corn because finding anything made with non-gmo corn is almost impossible. There are sturdier chips so they're perfect for salsa, queso, guacamole or even taco bowls because they don't immediately fall apart. Savannah's favorite is the hatch chili and I'm really excited to try the churro but I have really liked just the original. Ready to give masa a try? Go to masachips.com slash haywanderer and use code haywanderer for 25% off your first order. Again that's masachips.com using code haywanderer or you can click the link in the description box below or scan the QR code on the screen. You're welcome. It's actually really beautiful outside today which is not something I thought I would be saying. Casey is in town so I'm not gonna work on the secret garden while she's away because it's definitely a two-person job so I'm doing some things in the garden. I was checking on my beans that I planted. I don't remember when I planted them but they've come up and they're looking good but at the end of this row there's still probably a third of the row that I could plant and because our raised beds aren't doing so well I think I'm gonna plant some cucumbers down there and just let them sprawl out. I have another place that if we get to it I'll plant more cucumbers. Really I am sad that we haven't had any fresh cucumbers to eat really. I mean we've had a few and I made the pickles but other than that nothing has really done well which this happens from time to time where our cucumbers haven't done well and then we'll have years where we're just swimming in them. I really want to can relish this year. We ran out of it this winter and I love having that for chicken salad, potato salad, on a hot dog. Just it's nice to have it. It adds a lot of flavor to something really easily. Here I'm planting some summer squash. I cannot find like zucchini seeds at all so these are just kind of like zucchini types but not that green dark zucchini. It occurred to me that I usually do this with Casey which she could kink the hose up there and I would get wet but I'm gonna have to do this to just get wet. I hope you don't get wet. We really have been wanting to measure how tall this sunflower is and I don't really exactly know how to do that but I'm gonna try to do that before it falls over because it is looking like it's almost done. My measurement was almost 12 feet. It's a big old sunflower. I'm up at the raised garden beds and I'm going to put in the amendments that we bought in hopes that we can fix whatever's happening in the soil which is not good. One of the beds where I planted all of my spicy peppers, the hot peppers, they are just like yellow. This bed has started to look less bad which is the first bed that we planted but none of it is good. Nothing is thriving so I have all kinds of things to get us back into the good soil business. So I have some special measurements for everything that we have for each bed so I'm gonna mix it in here and then we're gonna have to get creative on how we mix it into the soil because this one has mulch on top and you don't want to mix the mulch into the soil. That'll cause us even more problems. I'm not exactly sure how it's gonna go but we're gonna try to figure it out. I'm gonna try to separate the soil everywhere there isn't a plant. It seems like a lot of amendment for this little bed. Oh there's just a tomato there. I thought that was on the plant. What are, ew, it's a hoverfly. What kind of tomato is this? Beepy purple? Is that what it's called? Yeah I think it's raining. I don't know why it's not purple it's like orange and yellow. That's where that's where it's from. I swear it's yeah it says beepy purple down there. And then this one that you have the thing around which is comical because I know well it's actually I was putting it in the one in the middle because I thought they could all lean on it. Salvia looks terrible yesterday and the other one looks great you know. This is obviously not ready but you can't tell it's huge. It's Abigail. That's Abigail. So we've had this pathway here basically since we started doing this garden and long before this garden was here and now it doesn't quite line up flow and line up right. So we're gonna widen it right here which means some of this bed has to come out which means these stupid plants have to come out. They look terrible. They look terrible. It's art artiplex I think. Atriplex? Atriplex. That's what it is. They're really just like a filler flower but they have just gotten diseased. They just they look terrible. So I'm gonna come out and yeah also so then they never really even did what they're supposed to. Yeah they never look right. So this used to be a garden bed. When we put these beds in here this is going to be too close. So this is just going to be a pathway but as you see we've had this sage plant planted here for four or five years but that's in the way. So what I think I'm going to do is rip all these up put this everlasting sage over here. There's also bee balm and what is that other thing called? Pissup. Pissup. Well we'll see. We'll see how I feel because I want this to be a pathway because on the end of the pathway is another one that goes this way and for the person who rides the riding lawn mower it would be nice. They'll just drive right through? Yes. It'd be nice if that wasn't grass one day. That would that would be better. So as a reminder today is the last day. Today is Sunday. It's really not today but that's the day this video is going up and you're going to see it. The last day you could enter into our Greenstalk giveaway. In order to do that you fill out the form that's in the description box below and be a subscriber of our newsletter. If you are a subscriber you know that this week some of my garden master gardeners group is coming to our house. Coming to look at our gardens and when I invited them here I went temporarily insane because this is a terrible time to have people come to your garden. It's just sort of when things are just not looking their best. Things are diseased and I've been running around like a crazy person trying to make things look better and I was thinking about it. I'm like none of these people are judgmental. None of them probably have perfect gardens. Why do I care? What does it all mean? What does this reveal about myself? I think what it is it's like gardening is is a creative expression for me. Much like getting dressed is a way to express yourself my garden is a way. Also though most people that come here you know everybody likes flowers I mean nobody isn't you know no one's like oh I hate flowers but we don't very often have people who really know not just like appreciate them but know about how hard gardening is and blah blah. So this will be like the first people to come that will really just understand and I just wanted to look good. It'll be interesting. It will. It's gonna look great. Probably can't tell in here but I tied a string from this arch all the way to that arch to show where we need to cut things out of the ground. Oh you really can't see it. Okay you stretched it out. So that's how much of the bed that Casey just took the plants out needs to get out of here and some of this bed will have to go. Honestly a little bit of every bed will have to go but it's not very much. I actually think I've moved that sage before. Yeah. Should we get the broadside? Maybe. I just think I'm in it's got this massive either way she's ought to come out. This has aces. Like that's the only problem we don't have. It's just not even going in. Okay. I'm like bro how are you in here? How are you big? I feel like it's roots aren't that big. Oh it isn't very big. No we still have this. I think you could spread it out and this doesn't take over like it did reggae. It looks terrible but maybe it'll fix itself. Well you got a terrible effect. Well I figured we would do multiple lemon thyme also. This will be our herb edge. I got herbs everywhere but. So this is the pathway we're trying to transform. All right today's the day that we have to finish this secret garden. Basically Casey's gardening people are coming in just a few days and we have other things we need to do. So we were like today we've got to finish this or at least get it to a state where it's finished enough and all the plants are planted. That's really the biggest deal. There's a lot of other little things that need to be done like the tops of these things need to be cut off. I'm not sure if I'll get to the gate. Hopefully it'll start looking like what it's supposed to look like. So what I really want to do to line the pathways is use logs. The only problem is the pathways are tiny woodpecker right there. Anyway the problem is is that the gardens are going to be super curved and you know logs are usually pretty straight. So I was telling Casey if we could find trees that are just a little have a little curve in them I could probably put a couple curved pieces together and be able to make a pretty organic shaped bed. But she thinks that's going to take a long time but right now she's inside writing. So I think I'm just going to start working on that until she comes out. There's a piece of wood right here that's lining our pathway that if you can see it's like off the ground. Like super curved. I'm like that could be used over there and we could just put another log here for the pathway. You could use it as a marker of a garden bed. We have quite the collection of plants. Like this is not the exact shape really but I was thinking like this kind of curve. I don't know what do you think? Okay that's pretty. This will be the same or you know same over here all the way to the gate. Sure. Basically I've essentially made this. Yes yeah those blueberries are right in the walkway. And I feel like this bed will be it goes out like from here. I'm gonna go steal a plant for myself. Not from anybody. From my beautiful Japanese maple garden. This garden just as an aside is probably our easiest most low maintenance garden. The only thing I have to do is pull out weeds which I did recently. I mean I just see there's a few I missed but this I can't remember what this is called. I don't know if this is empress woo. I think no it's the darker that's the one but this is basically it's lighter skin brother or sister. And they're too close together. Yeah. I think they were just roots. They were and then they came back this year. Oh wow that boxwood's coming back. Hazel's gonna have to go inside. Wow it's so perfect. Oh yeah that'd be nice. I always overfill the oil. And it looks like a nice curve. Three logs. That middle one might be the problem log but I'm hoping that the um angles. So we are planting everything in these like mesh bags. I think we talked about your wire mesh. Yeah we have a lot of gopher vole mole activities. I think we have all three of them. They all kind of like different things but two of them the voles and the gophers will actually eat your plant roots. And so I'm planting everything in these. I won't do like uh annuals in these but you know anything that's gonna. Like this. Like this. More expensive trees. Yeah. All of everything we planted out here today we have planted these bags and they're not that expensive. And what will happen is yeah the roots will still be able to go through the mesh bag but that that core crown root which is what they like to eat will be protected. So I don't think it's a guarantee that it won't ruin but it is better. I think we have eight or nine. Almost all of the holes. Savannah show me your arms. Oh um okay. I actually just started to try to wipe mine off. This happens no matter what we're doing. If we're painting, doing anything where you might get dirty Savannah stays pristine. Like it doesn't even other than she's sweating. She looks clean and I always look. Show me your arms like this too. Oh you can see your glove line. The glove line even though I I do have gloves on but they're clearly it's going through but I don't know I don't I don't know why I'm like what are you doing differently? What's happening? I think you like manhandle the dirt. Anyway. This is a hookah I dug up from the front garden bed because it doesn't really like it up there it's too much sun I think but it has bigger roots so I was putting the roots through here because it's small because I dug it up and all the dirt fell off but try to get these roots spread their wings because it has a lot of them. The last plant was just planted now just gotta do a little pickup a lot of pickup. Also we may or may not be planning on buying a few more plants. There's some spots that need some things and we need some height back here and we also want to put a pond here so we're like hey a little a little pond a tiny little pond but. Okay so it's one and a half days since we planted this and I want to show you what's already happened. I don't know if you can see that crack that is a mounded up pathway from voles and it goes right into the plants and every plant is in the wire but we're also kind of worried about the tops because they can get up there. It's just crazy because when we KC raked all the like wood debris out here and it was just spare dirt there were no pathways like that and we have them everywhere but back here there were none and it was like we put these plants in and with a day they had found them. So I'm glad we planted everything in those mesh things also it's humid of course. I got my planters done. I know you've been on the edge of your seat wanting to see how they turned out. I'm actually very happy with how they turned out. It was very tough to go there for a minute but they're beautiful. Something that happened behind the scenes is we had somebody come out and lay mulch for us on several of our beds. We didn't have time to do it and they do look very nice. One of the things he mulched was the pathway that we were working on but I'm very excited that the garden is done. It turned out better than I could have imagined. We have already bought more plants that I need to plant now. As if what 30 something wasn't enough why not a few more. We just saw there were some holes in some places. We will show this to you again when we also put a pond in. Maybe that'll be next year. I don't know. You know you just never know. We love it. We're so happy and now I want to do more gardens in the woods because one that's a nice cool place to do gardening in the middle of summer. It's also just really magical. I actually really like a lot of shade plants. Next week we are planning on finally doing our garden tour. We've got it super neat and tidy. This is the time to show it off. We'll be showing you what it looked like before and what it looks like now. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week.