Backyard Before and After: Part 1

The yard is still a work in progress and there will probably end up being like 30 before and after entries, but this is the first one complete right now: the southwest corner where you enter the backyard when following the sidewalk around the garage. 

This is what the area looked like when we walked into the backyard on a visit at the end of May 2013:

May 2013

I used some of these photos on a 'before and after' post last year to show how fast things grow in Portland in the spring, since it was only a month between the shots above and below.

Besides filling with weeds, this area became overgrown with the blackberry plants that were there, and all the offshoots that grew from them over the time the house was vacant. There were also about a dozen small cherry trees growing here. We assumed they popped up from birds dropping seeds from cherries picked off a neighbor's tree next door. While we'd like a cherry tree, that neighbor's tree is full-sized. A dwarf cherry variety would be a must for our yard space, so these trees had to go.

April 2013

During some of our summer visits and soon after we moved, we started clearing this area. I took down the chicken wire fencing between the wood fence and around the clothesline. I cut down the cherry trees to dry for firewood and pulled out the roots. We never figured out what the plant shown below was since we never saw it flower or fruit, so we pulled it out and removed the wooden box and trellis.

April 2013

Over the winter I cleared out remaining fence scraps, concrete blocks and other debris, pulled weeds, and tilled the area along the fence, as seen below.

January 2014 

While the blackberries were still dormant, I transplanted them. Added trellises, pulled weeds, tilled the entire area and spread grass seed once it started getting warmer. And here is what it looks like now:

June 2014

Yeah. HUGE difference.

In the earlier photos you could barely see that there were pear trees in there. Nick did a lot of pruning since they'd been neglected for so long, so they are all nicely-shaped now and all growing an incredible amount of fruit.

We definitely wanted to keep the blackberries, just a little more controlled and deliberately placed. Fortunately the main plant was already in a great location next to the clothesline, so we kept it there, just adding a trellis so we could train the branches to grow up instead of out. It looks much cleaner, takes up less space, and the berries will be more easily accessible for picking from any side.

I wanted to keep a few of the smaller blackberry offshoots as well to increase the fruit yield, so I made a plan to transplant them while still dormant to a new location along the fence, selecting the largest of the offshoot systems and composting the rest. I attached the trellises along the fence area between the two pear trees and transplanted those root systems. These trellises and the trellis attached to the clothesline we found in other areas of the yard, so those were existing. We always try to reuse or re-purpose existing items for projects before buying anything new.

As you can see below the newer plants are still fairly small, but should get bigger and bigger every year, each eventually getting as big as the mother system above. Like our other fruits and berries, I'd like to have enough blackberries to eat some from the bush, use some fresh picked for baking, some to freeze, and some to can as a compote, probably making a plum/blackberry mix to make them go further. We're really looking forward to being able to add stuff we grew ourselves to our meals year-round!

And here's another view of the same area, before and after:

May 2013

June 2014

Rain Collection Barrel for the Chicken Coop

Our property came with a barrel to collect rain water from the large covered backyard patio/roof, which we left as-is. I think it holds 55 gallons, since that seems to be the standard barrel size. It's elevated on concrete blocks and surrounded by fence planking, making it a bit more aesthetically pleasing since it's right next to our patio hangout space:

Eventually we might do something to brighten up the planks around it or something, but it's just fine for the time being. Notice the flowering bamboo/reed-like wall of plants along the patio edge in the above photo. I'll refer back to it later.

We were interested in collecting more water, so recently I picked up a free rain barrel through Craigslist for collecting rain run-off from the covered chicken run:

The free barrel and newly cleared area to the right where it will go

The barrel itself was in fine shape, being a very heavy-duty plastic. The people were giving it away because of a broken nozzle at the end of the very short hose attachment. Regardless of the hose nozzle, I found the existing set up was not very functional because the small plastic spout wouldn't allow for more than a trickle of water no matter what. So we upgraded. Nick used a 3/4 inch hollowing bit thing to drill around the existing drain hole and we installed a regular-sized spigot with an easy half-turn knob:

Concrete blocks found around the yard now have a purpose!

For us to do this meant turning the barrel on its side and me crawling into it to hold the interior piece in place with a wrench while Nick attached and screwed on the outer piece, which must have been a funny sight as I was almost 6 months pregnant at the time, almost 7 now. This is the first mention of it on the blog, so here's a recent photo of me working in the yard, which I'm still doing for several hours a day, almost every day:

Pregnant gardening!

Oh, and check out the patio rain barrel behind my left arm and the area along the edge where those previously-mentioned yellow-flowering bamboo/reed plants used to be. After much consideration and debate about whether or not to keep them, they are now gone. That was about a 30 hour project for me, primarily because the root system was incredibly deep and dense. I added some soil, tilled along the patio edge, and am growing two rows of peas along there on a little trellis. The patio living room area feels so much more open now with a great panoramic view of the yard instead of a wall of plants, which also extended several feet out into the usable yard space. Will make a post on that sometime.

Back to the coop rain barrel. The coop roof had an existing gutter, but it was in bad shape and was set up to empty out at an area where it would be inconvenient to have a rain barrel. We'd rather it be more hidden and out of the way instead of taking up precious yard space.

Before any of our coop improvements 

After removing the old gutter, I painted the wood frame it attached to in order to weather-proof it a little and so it matched the coop, which I'd recently painted with a second coat.

I cleaned out the old gutter to reuse some of it, and picked up a new 10-foot section plus some gutter accessories for my plan. The covered area is about 12 feet long through, so there's a section without gutter. I might add to that end eventually or just leave it as is.

Nick and I attached the new gutter in such a way to fight gravity and send the rain streaming to the north end of the coop and around the corner. Since the coop/run/land is all slightly south-sloping, the gutter needed to be angled sharply in the opposite direction to get the water to run that way, but we got it to work:

Water runs through the shiny and new gutter angled along the east side of the chicken run roof

And around the corner to the back side where I re-used a section of the old, sun-faded gutter

I still need to detach the gutter on this back end and paint the plywood and the run frame like I did to the other sections. Also in the photo above you can see that just underneath the lip of the corrugated roofing we installed a metal extension. Along several sections of the roof water would drip down between the gutter and the wood frame, so we attached this curved metal to ensure any runoff gets directed into the gutter.

And into the  barrel, where I can fill my watering can

With a 10 x 8 foot collection area, we will get almost 45 gallons, or almost a full barrel, for each inch of rainfall. We'd probably get 5 times that from the patio roof. During the periods of heavy rain, we could really use a series of barrels to collect overflow since we would really like to be able to keep enough to be able to exclusively water with rainwater during the summer, but that's a project for down the line.

Patio Planter & Raspberry Shortcake

On our drive back to Portland from the olive grove tour last fall we stopped at this locally-owned nursery/garden center near Sherwood, Oregon because it was advertising a Japanese maple sale, and we wanted one of those for the garden area outside of the living room window. While there we looked at what else they had and there were several small potted raspberry plants that were fruiting. They were call 'raspberry shortcake' and they were delicious! We didn't buy then since it was the end of the season, but made a mental note to come back and get some for the spring.

Our house came with a bed of established golden raspberries, which I'd never had before because they are too fragile for transport so they may occasionally be found at a local farmers market, but that's it. Raspberries are y favorite berry, so I wanted to have several varieties. Raspberry shortcake is a dwarf variety, which meant they would do well in a planter and make a great green addition to our patio living room plan.

This project started with the purchase of a storage bench in the Ikea Applaro outdoor furniture line, which is what we picked for the patio. I put the bench together, leaving off the top lid piece to get what you see below:

Ikea Applaro storage bench

Then I used a staple gun and some very thick tarp (from a torn Burning Man shade structure) to create a sturdy liner:
 

Before filling it with soil, I made a few drainage holes in the bottom of the tarp. Then added the dirt and the two raspberry plants we picked up at the end of February when we passed the same nursery again on the way back from a beach trip:

Planted March 15th, 2014

It looked really sad. But just two months later last year's canes are full of leaves and ripening berries and new growth has filled in all around, which will provide a second round harvest later in the summer:

May 16, 2014

So perfect for a planter. These little guys would have been completely overrun by the giant raspberries in the garden box. We did have some extra space in there so I ended up planting an additional 3 varieties: Newburgh, Amity, and some starts of an unknown variety from a friend's garden. And it really does work perfectly as a planter on the patio, where I plan to spend many summer evenings relaxing on the outdoor couch with a bowl full of just-picked raspberries:

Pierre also enjoys relaxing on the patio

Update: June 12, 2014

We've been getting berries for about a week! Just 3 months between emergence from dormancy to this:

Making Room for Strawberries

We've been making a lot of changes in the yard and one that is ready for documentation is the removal of bamboo from this garden bed and making it a more useful space for us. I assume that whoever planted the bamboo in the middle of this garden bed was doing so for kind of a privacy screen, because there is a small window on the second floor of the house next door.

Bamboo garden box when we moved in

We decided we'd rather use this garden bed for strawberries, but didn't get rid of the bamboo entirely: I transplanted 6 large pots full, located in between the bed and the fence. I really like bamboo, but I needed it to look as if it were placed more purposefully, and this arrangement still allows for a bit of taller natural privacy at this location along the fence.

I used about half of the existing bamboo, which was all I was able to easily dig up. The larger, more dense clump in the center had deeper roots and was too difficult to separate out. So I listed the remaining bamboo on the Portland Craigslist free section, and a guy was at our house within a few hours to dig out the rest of it and take it with him, leaving a really nice and empty garden box:

Since we planned to use this garden bed for strawberries, it made sense to remove the upper bed section and use just the lower. The upper section had started rotting at the edges, so the short ends pulled off easily on each side. As you can see, the top bed wasn't completely full, but before anything else I had to remove a lot of dirt and level the remaining soil to just below the lower bed line. Then I took a hammer and removed the small pieces of wood holding the longer side on, and removed that. I left the fence side plank on for now, but may remove it later. It's not really in the way there and that cuts down on wood waste if we can't find another use for these. In the photo below you can see the old boards leaning up against the shed on the left, which we are planning on getting rid of by also listing it on Portland's Craigslist free section.

We used some of the extra dirt to fill the raspberry bed and topped off two of the planned vegetable garden beds (the only 2 currently weeded and now ready for planting). I shoveled the remaining soil onto a tarp and into some pots, which we'll need once the rest of the garden beds are cleared of yard debris and weeded.

Strawberries planted

Amongst other things, I finished the extra dirt removal, took off the upper bed planks, and planted the strawberries on a single, 65+ degree Sunday in late March. The strawberries I'd purchased at Portland Nursery the Friday before on my way home from work. There are about three rows each of the three varieties I selected: Albion, Benton, and Quinault. I spent some time at the nursery reading all of the tags and decided on those three for best length of fruiting through the spring, summer and fall. We probably won't have much fruit on them this year  since they are just establishing and we're supposed to pinch off the flowers to help the plant grow larger and spread. Next year though, we'll have a very nice crop!

Update: September 2014. Pretty much all of the transplanted bamboo died, so I cut it all down! Still have to throw the roots in the compost bin and find a new place for the remaining soil. That will be a project for spring!

Digging up and Moving an Apple Tree

I love that our yard is has some established fruit trees and berries. It's definitely one of the things we were looking for in property. Unfortunately that meant not getting to choose where the previous owners had planted those things. Most of it is fine, but for some reason there was a young semi-dwarf Pink Lady apple tree purposely planted in the middle of a garden bed full of golden raspberries. I thought that was pretty odd, but wasn't sure at the time whether we'd want to keep it there or move it. 

Here is a photo of that bed area from mid-summer. In the bed on the right you can kind of see the apple tree in with all the raspberries - it's the tall thing in the middle. 

Now that fall is here, it was time to make that decision. The younger a fruit tree is, the easier it is to transplant, and fall is the time to do it because they are entering dormancy. After brief deliberation, we decided to go ahead and move it nearby to the space between the the two garden beds, which we briefly used for tossing weeds during our first weekend of yard clean up. Most of those weeds had deteriorated nicely into compost soil, some of which I shoveled into the nearby beds.

Here's that area once I'd cleaned it out.

I found something strange when I was cleaning out this space: tile. There were almost a dozen pieces of tile laying between the beds, covered by dirt and grass and then the weed compost pile. Someone's attempt at preventing weeds or??? Not sure. But I used all of them to cover the compost which covered the weeds in the raspberry bed, trying to smother them out.

I also found two old stumps and root balls back in this area, nearer to the fence. Roots are so much easier to dig out when they've been dead for a very long time! This big thing was hardly any work.

Here's the Pink Lady in the raspberry bed pre-move:

And here it is in it's new location:

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I tilled this whole area down as far as I could go before digging the hole. Easily dug up the tree since it's still young and the roots aren't too large, and moved it over. I mixed in some of the soil from it's original planting with the new stuff, staked it to keep it straight, and watered. Now to see how well it handles the winter and then grows in the spring.

I'm really happy we decided to move it. It has it's own space now and will be easier to access for picking/pruning. This was a fun project, and because it was really nice for the past few days, it was a great break from doing things in the house.

My how the garden grows...

It's incredible how quickly things grow in Portland's spring thanks to all the rain. Just one month had gone by since our last trip and the yard is ridiculous. This will be great once we're living there and able to work on it every day but we've pretty much given up on having any control over it this year. We spent Saturday of Memorial Day weekend in the yard with Dylan and Elizabeth joining us for much of the day. They are pros since they also have turned their yard into a fantastic urban farm. Also they have all the best yard and garden equipment like a weedeater and chainsaw.

We did some fruit tree pruning and think we figured out what we have:
- One dwarf pink lady apple tree (the only one we're sure of since it still has the tag on it)
- One very large and established plum tree
- Three pear trees
- A few small cherry trees that came from seeds fallen from the neighbor's yard
- The biggest surprise was finding out the 3 woody vines at the trellis in the east side yard are kiwi. KIWI! The actual fuzzy kind, not the smaller yet hardy fuzz-less kind usually grown in Oregon. But the vines seem to really be growing well and are definitely several years old. We'll see how they fruit.

And of course the grapes, golden raspberries, and thorn-less blackberries. There is also a small tree of some kind of mystery fruit at the base of one of the pear trees.

Here's what we walked in to on May 25th:

April 27th

May 25th

April 27th

View from the northwest corner looking over the garden boxes.

May 25th

Nick is under the plum tree in the back corner using the weedeater on the small grass patch area. Thanks to Dylan we have a sweet new push mower, but it doesn't work on foot-plus high grass.