Hello!

I hope you are all doing well, as we approach the transition to the next season. In my neck of the woods, up here in the north west, we are technically still in the season of Spring, but we’re experiencing some ridiculously high temperatures for this time of the year, which makes it feel like it’s been Summer for more than the last month already. It’s been great in motivating me to be outside, soaking up all the sun I missed out on during our painfully long and cold winter, and working away on landscaping, gardening, and improving our outdoor space. There are plenty of things on the go, but for today I thought I’d show you all a little DIY project I had fun putting together for my veggie garden.

When we moved into our house, there were a handful of garden beds sprinkled around the back fence, and last year I just went ahead and used those for my first foray into growing a vegetable garden. It was an experiment, and I didn’t want to over-reach with the amount of knowledge, time, or energy I had at the time. I went into the growing season with the idea that if anything was successful I'd take it as a win, even if some things didn’t make it. Overall it went better than expected, but I knew I wanted to rearrange some things, take advantage of the space we have, find better placement, and get a little more serious. This year, we got ourselves a rototiller, and dug up a nice chunk of ground, to grow a proper veg garden.

More space, more plants, more things to keep track of.

Wait, what did we plant there, again?

I knew with everything we have on the go, I’d be hard pressed to find the mental bandwidth to keep track of exactly what was where, so I decided we needed some tags to label the sections.

I’m doing my best to get away from plastic as much as is reasonably possible, and to reduce waste as much as we can… and so, with all the renovating we’ve been doing, I knew there must be some little scraps of wood laying around just waiting to be upcycled. I was right! So, hubby and I took a couple small pieces of lumber, and ran them through the band saw, ripping them into thinner sections, and tapering the ends, to make a sort of stake that I could stick into the ground.

I had thought about using my wood burner to write on them, but wanted to make sure they would stand out enough to be visible once they were placed, and figured it would be a good idea to seal the wood to make sure they wouldn’t degrade too quickly with the constant sunshine and watering they’ll be subject to, so I decided to give them a coat of black spray paint.

I lined them up in a little box, to keep the mess contained, gave them a spray on each visible side, then once that side was dry, flipped them and sprayed the other side as well.

Once that had cured for a day or so, I got to the fun part - making the labels, using some acrylic paint pens I got for my birthday. I had a hard time deciding which direction to go - Keep them simple black and white? Maybe gold? Maybe some little drawings of each thing? I couldn’t really decide, so I just sort of went with what felt good at the time: colourful, fun, and decorative!

The colours mostly coincide with the items (white potatoes, red potatoes, pink potatoes, rainbow carrots, orange carrots, green onions, yellow onions), and I decided they each needed a little gold decorative accent… because I was having fun, and why not?

They work great - I no longer need to try to remember what I’ve placed where! Plus, if they fade, or I get bored with them, or plant different things next year, I can always give them a fresh coat of paint to make them like new again.

I'm happy to report that most of the things I’ve planted have shown me that they’re quite happy, and are springing to life before my eyes. I’ll be sure to do a garden walkthrough for you all soon.