Still "Plowing" Ahead

Bad soil.

Well not so much bad soil, as the wrong mix of soil.

That's what we determined the problem is. Using our powers of observation, a little help from our fellow suburban micro gardeners (thank you Bob), and a bit of info from the city compost mill, we determined that the compost we used to plant our seeds is not sufficient to grow vegetables.  It's a good "addition" to the NC clay-like soil, but it doesn't have enough body to support a root system for veggies or flowers.

So Tom called another local place that sells dirt (again, thank you Bob) and found out what we need.  This week we will spread the compost we currently have among the four boxes (see below), then top them with the dirt we'll pick up this week.

In the meantime, we got busy "plowing" ahead with numerous other tasks to keep our forward progress in motion.

I learned how to weed whack.  Not very good at it yet, but Tom sure was excited that I was interested in learning how to use this piece of lawn equipment.  Something about moving on to the sidewalks and driveways?  Don't know what he could mean by that. ??

We worked on our irrigation system. We have one hose running from each rain barrel with a "Y" splitter at the end.

From the "Y" splitter we attached soaker hoses which will go into the boxes (once we have new dirt).  Each rain barrel has this hose configuration so that all four boxes can be watered from the rain barrels.  What will we do when we have a yard full of boxes?  Who knows, but this will work for now.

We bought enough wood to build two more boxes.

This will be it for box building this year.

I was supervising at this point.

Break time is over.... gotta fill the boxes with leaves.

The other project we worked on this weekend was the compost bins. We purchased a roll of 4'x50', hardwire cloth (that's what it's called).  We played around with different configurations.  This one was three big bins.

Tom didn't like that too much - too big.  So we cut the fencing in half and figure-eighted each to create four  smaller bins.  He liked this better because it gives him more bins to play with and it allows the material to build up higher and "cook" faster.

He was a pretty darn happy camper to fill up the first bin with two weeks worth of grass clippings.

Excess leaves from the fall got put into bins 1, 2 & 4, then a drink of water for all.  Bin 3 is left open for more green yard waste to be filled at a later time.

~Y