Garden Progress at Last!!

We've had a long stretch of rainy, cold weather that made it seem as though summer would never come. Not to mention that the community garden doesn't open until May 18 (!!) As the rain poured down and the gates stayed closed, my small seedlings turned into wild beasts, threatening to take over our guest room.

'A few more days and we'll eat the cat.'

Last week we had a decent stretch on sunshine, and although I didn't want to be that person to jump the gun and plant all of my babies just to be killed off by a late frost, we did roll up our sleeves and start building our garden. You see, we're going a bit overboard this year: in addition to our 20x20 plot at the community garden, we're doing a small 6x4x12 raised bed right outside of our apartment. We're going to plant everyday veggies there like lettuce, spinach, and basil, as well as some tomatoes and some other varieties to compare how they grow in the bed versus the garden.

First, we tore up the sod under where the bed would go. We went for the more eco-friendly, gas free tilling option by using a manual tiller (in other words, Brian couldn't figure out how to get the roto-tiller the neighbor loaned us to start!) The blisters are still raw...six by four sounds small until you have to tear it up yourself!

Brian earning his keep, and putting his back into tilling

It turned out that we have really, really good soil for a base. According to the Vegetable Gardner's Bible (buy it now), roots are the most under appreciated, misunderstood, and most important part of a plant. Yes, we could have just plopped down a weed barrier and poured our topsoil on top of it, but plants shoot down a lot of important biomass down into the earth. We wanted to make sure that there was nothing in the way.

In addition, our soil is a well drained loamy-sand. There were far fewer rocks than anticipated, and so many fat earthworms that I'll never be buying bait again. Worms are another indicator of healthy soils.

Yum!

 We dug post holes for the corners, and settled the frame that Brian has build. We then filled it with a 50:30:20 mix of topsoil, peat and compost. Of course, not a few hours later it started to rain, and the forecast doesn't show it stopping for another week. Stay tuned for the transplants, if they haven't eaten me by then!

Brian adding the finishing touches to our first raised bed