Two Peas in a Pod

    Spring is here and I wanted to update you all on the progress I've been making in the Victory Garden. In one of my previous posts, I whined quite a bit about all the mucking in cow poo I did to try to prep the soil for planting- BIG mistake! Apparently for the manure to be effective you have to put a three to six inch layer of the smelly stuff, rather than the sprinkling I lovingly placed on my plot. All of my hard work turned out to be nothing more than food for the weeds. When I visited my plot last weekend I found my entire plot covered in knee high weeds. I was so POed that I grabbed my gardening gloves and went at those weeds like a charging ork in battle. After much swearing and sweating I'm proud to say that I got every last one of those weeds up. Since I was on a roll, and determined to keep my plot weed free for at least another week, I once again hopped into the big pile of dung and started hauling barrel after barrel of manure to my plot. While it was my intention to cover the entire plot with a six inch covering of manure, my advancing years got the better of me and I quit after only covering about a third of the plot. You may think I was being lazy, but hauling shit is hard work! 

    After some more whining and soaking of my muscles, and some sage advice form my Mom, I decided that it would be a less daunting feat to build raised beds and work one at a time, rather than trying to work the whole plot at once. So my mission for this three day weekend was just that. I had found a design for raised beds on the web, adjusted it to fit my beer budget, and Saturday I set off to the hardware store to purchase all the makings of a raised bed. I was a little worried about fitting all of the lumber into my car, but I am happy to say that after a little huffing and puffing I was able to get it all to fit -thank God for a rear window that opens! 

    Sunday I hauled all the building materials out to my plot and got busy assembling the beds. While the assembly part seemed to go by really fast, the leveling process took forever.  After digging the beds in and putting the on the arches, I think they turned out pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. 

  

    The next phase of Project Raised Beds was to fill those suckers full of dirt! One might ask "Isn't there dirt already there?". Well yes there is, but since I made raised beds I have to fill the raised part with additional dirt. I tried to do an internet search about how many bags of soil are need to fill one 16 cubic feet of raised bed, but there was no info on bag quantities required. So instead I just filled my Jeep up with as many bags of topsoil and composted manure (I know more manure) as it would possibly hold, and carted it out to the farm. After many trips between my car and the plot, I now have an answer to my question- it takes 18! 40-lb bags of soil/manure to fill at 16 cubic feet raised bed. Phew! But once all the soil/manure was mixed in (a 2:1 ratio if you're interested) I was now ready to plant that bed, and plant I did! I planted shallot sets, two varieties of beets, carrots, lettuce, and spinach. I left some room for planting my leeks and onions later on. I also cleared out a space along the fence and planted some green beans adjacent to my row of peas, which are looking very cute with their curly-q sprouts. 

    Next weekend I'm aiming to fill and plant two more of the beds. On the home front, my veggie seedlings are thriving and have all been transplanted into individual containers and are happily growing under the grow light, awaiting their turn to be planted in the garden! Also to come are custom Mommy made bed covers to go over those ingenious arches built into the raised bed (did you catch the pat on the back there?). Until next time, Hobey Ho!