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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Almost ready

I took a couple days off work recently so I could spend some time in the garden. The weather was beautiful, and I got a lot done.

My first task was filling the new raised bed. It's been sitting like this for a couple weeks.


After running around town to three different garden centers, I finally had all of my supplies. I like to use a variety of different composts, and no one store had everything I wanted.


That's roughly 900 pounds of soil amendments, but who's counting. (Uh, me, the one who carried them all).

The first thing I did was fill the bottom of the bed with all of the bags of leaves I had tucked under my deck. Some of them were more decomposed than others.


Then it was time to mix everything else together. A giant tarp is a great garden tool. Pile everything on...


...and mix it up.


The trusty snow shovel is great for getting the soil from the tarp to the bed.


There's still room for a little more filling.


There usually is. I do the math, but I never buy as much material as I know I'll need. Oh well, there are a few more bags of compost in the garage. I just need to drag them down the hill and toss them in. Then this bed will be ready for tomatoes.

2 comments:

  1. The bed looks great! You are right in that you will definitely need more to fill it up. I have found that the soil level goes down a lot as it settles, as much as 25%.

    I think that's one of the things that I dislike the most about the start of the garden season - all that running around getting manure, amendments, compost, mulch, straw. Now that you mention it, I should probably set aside one day just to do the running around and get it over with. Much better than doing it piece-meal over a few weeks.

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  2. You are so right. We've had three days of rain, and now the bed looks like it's only half full. Guess there's more running around in my future, too.

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