Garden Progress

How did John and I spend our Valentines Day? Shoveling cow manure that's how! Saturday I ran all over town buying the necessary supplies and dirt. We even marked out the stepping stones that we threw down in the dog path. Reese is obviously not happy about the change.



Sunday afternoon John started getting the raised bed together. This required finally buying a new drill which is modeled here with the bed.



Once we got the bed built we had to level out the ground a bit and so shoveled, found a ton of grubs (EW! No wonder skunks have been grubbing in the yard) and a ton of rocks, but had a level bed in the end. Next came mixing up the soil. I did 1/2 compost, 1/4 vermiculite and 1/4 peat moss. I read this is a better mix for Texas on different blogs (isn't that dorky of me) than the 1/3 of each ingredient. We'll see! Plus the peat moss and vermiculite can really start to add up.

My bed is 4x8 so we mixed the dirt in two batches. Definitely start mixing when you're throwing the contents onto the tarp or whatever you decide to use. It'll be easier to mix the giant mound of dirt if you start while you're adding.



Here it is with all the dirt. We mixed it with shovels on the tarp and by lifting the corners and moving the dirt around. Then we shoveled it into the bed until the tarp was light enough to pick up and dump.

The stakes are for some type of fencing to keep the dogs out. I've already caught them walking in it and Riley has tried to mark the bed a couple of times. Don't know how I'm going to deal with that one. I guess I should be glad our two male dogs are short and probably won't ever hit a plant. We're going to probably enclose all four sides, I just didn't buy enough wood to make stakes.

We did a temporary grid with sting. It was just easier that way. The squares aren't exactly 12x12 because of how you have to build the box, but it's no big deal. I'm very glad John was there to measure off the grid because it would have made me go crazy to do on my own. I'm not a numbers person and he just broke it up into sections in a way that I would have NEVER considered.



Now it just needs to warm up a bit so I can start putting some seeds and plants in!