Someday I will have a wheelbarrow. Until then, I must be satisfied with getting lots of exercise for a relatively small payoff. But the good news is, the little square foot garden (it really is little) is nearly ready to rock.
A couple of weeks ago, fishy and I got lumber and worked together to build a little 4x4 raised bed. It's not exactly 4x4 inside; it's a little smaller, which means that I'm going to have to limit one side of my growing space to half a foot. So I'll have 12 square foot plots, and 4... less than square foot plots. This is okay. For things like basil or lettuce I don't need a full complement of plants.
Today I mostly filled it. I mulched the base with leftover Lee Valley packing paper. I used a bag of mushroom compost, the pile of soil leftover from when I dug the other veggie beds, some leaf litter, and four or five shovelfuls of our own awesome compost. It still needs a little more, so when I'm at the nursery on Sunday I'm going to pick up a bag of peat, a bag of vermiculite, and another bag or two of compost. When that's all mixed in with the organic-rich, sandy loam, I should have a soil that defies any vegetable not to grow well.
What was even more fun was that while I was shoveling, a robin stopped by to see what I was doing. It followed me around, waiting for poor worms and other critters that got exposed by my digging and plucking them up. It didn't seem to wary of me, which pleased me to no end, even when it was chewing its way through my helpful invertebrates. Too bad there are no earwigs for it to enjoy yet -- it can have as many of those as it wants.
2 comments:
I cut back last year's Huron grass and yelled at Zoe for digging up one of my lilacs--does that count as spring gardening?
Oh no! The lilacs! Yes, I'd say that all counts. Zoe probably figured she was being helpful, I'm sure.
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