Amending

We don't usually buy dirt...but there was definitely not enuf compost in our pile to amend this much square footage of garden.  So a load of humus was delivered and carted to the back yard .....

.....to be incorporated into the fairly loamy (?!?!?!) soil.  In our wildest dreams we never thought that this job would go as smoothly or as fast as it did.

  The soil at our house (a mere 100ft. away) was rock-hard clay that, at least in some spots, remains difficult to work even after 10yrs. of amending.

We avoid even trying plants that call for sandy soil - no point.  But after digging for a couple days in Joyce's yard we are planning on putting in some blueberries next year....Yea!

Repurposing

What was once a (falling apart) deck at my Moms house.....

...becomes raised beds in the new garden.

Tilling Day!

This monster was worth every penny.  It took us (US) 3 days to clear the weeds and it took Steve an hour and a half to till the entire yard...yea!

Notice the Amish farmer thing he's got going here....tee hee :)

Lovely rose overhanging from neighbors yard.

The light-colored strip of untilled land is where an old foundation still exists....soon to be a walkway.

Ta Da!!!!!!!!!!!!

Getting Started...Finally!

Thank God for power mowers!

It was looking pretty darn intimidating at the beginning of the 2-week 'vacation' Steve and the kids got for Spring break. With baseball or rains keeping us from getting to the yard every weekend up till now, the weeds had taken over the yard and had already gone to seed...eek!

We don't plan on using any kind of chemicals in the garden so I'm sure we'll be fighting the weed battle all summer. Hopefully our plans for drip irrigation will help to keep some of the seeds from germinating and we'll just deal with the others as they come up.

We started with a hand tool and used it for some of the taller plants....

... but mostly relied on good ol' John Deere to tear down the majority of the weed invaders.

We followed with a rake (the bag had to be taken off because it filled up too fast) or a smaller mower and deposited all the remains in a pile to be used as compost...the plan is to add some horse manure to help heat it up and kill off the seeds.

It was a long hard couple of days...

...but we got it done and ready for the rototiller.

Weeds CAN be pretty....

....but they still gotta go!  

More on our Spring Break project to follow :)

If at First...

...you don't succeed...

...try, try, again :)

Yes, the first set of tomato and pepper seedlings bit the dust, and yes it is actually much too late to be starting over (unless the plan was to not be eating tomatoes until August) but I really wanted to at least try to get these things to grow from seed.  I do have some seedlings coming from Seed Savers, but I'll most probably be buying the bulk of my tomato and pepper plants from the nursery.....sigh.

Next year I start this process in January.