Gardening?: The Humble Beginnings

"The snozberries taste like snozberries."
- Willy Wonka (Charlie and The Chocolate Factory)

So, some of you have been wondering when I was going to ACTUALLY do something to the ground i speak of. Well here is proof that I actually am a real person, and I plan on forcing the earth to do my bidding and grow me some tasty foods! This is where we started Saturday

My sister I must credit for pulling most of the weeds out of the ground. She threw them to one side of the planter box and allowed myself and my brother in law to really lay down the law on those pesky weeds! We started with a mostly cleared space, and had just a few weeds to pull. and after we spent some time moving the peach tree i got them and all the other stuff we could get a good grip on things!

We raked all the Jank into one corner. then used the big fat red rake there like a shovel and shoved it all in the yard waste bin. We filled that thing to the brim! Sure it was not all from the garden, but a good 20 lbs of weeds wound up in there!

Now If I had my Druthers I would have picked a much better Rake!

Next once it was all cleared and ready to be amended we set everything out. Does it not look much better?

Because I'm a little short on funds and time, the only things I had to spread into the dirt was from last year.

Inventory check: 1 Bag Steer Manure , 1 LARGE Bag of Alfalfa Pellets. oh, and I also had a half bag of potting soil that was sitting around so I added that too. This coming weekend I am going to get the fertilizer I need and probably will be planting.

The Rototiller you see in use was my grandfathers. He does not use it anymore , and because I till his soil with a shovel it was just fine of him to bequeath it to my sister. Now with this mighty tool we are able to till in all the great soil boosters. As you can see I tried to evenly spread the pellets around. Then the rototiller uses its two circular clawed spinning metal wheels and whirls the first foot of dirt into a frenzy . The now aerated and mixed soil is soft and ready for a young plants roots to take hold!

After all the hard work, and a couple hours, we got the whole of the garden ready to plant. All that's left now is to add the actual fertilizer to the bed, and plant. In the mean time it's good to let the soil rest and to water it a couple time this week to aid in the breakdown of the alfalfa pellets. I declare this Weekend to be a great success!

Other things of note that my brother in law and I did were uproot the 30+ year old rose bushes that were a tad past their prime. and the most difficult of things we did was remove the old juniper bush that resided in the back of their yard. That thing even when shaved down to only a couple feet tall must have weighed around 300 lbs!

We dug up around the roots and had to sever the larger of the roots to free the root ball. we wound up using a simple machine, a log and two by four to lever it out of its hole. That thing weighed a ton, but made us very happy to be rid of it! One Problem we did run into was our shovels were cracking under the stress we were putting them under. A much better shovel like this one would have helped!