In this second part of my discussion on garden fence boxes, we’ll look at how I built the boxes for my garden. First a quick review.

Review:

Why boxes?  Because my property is on a mountain side and our yard is sloping, I chose to use raised beds to keep my garden from washing down the slope every time we get a hard rain.

Why fencing?  To keep rabbits and dogs out of my crops.  If coon, possum or deer were a problem for us I’d need to modify the design to suit the pest: at least cover the top with mesh too, and lock the boxes down.

Why not a perimeter fence?  My garden cuts a swath up the center of my main “yard”: the area with fewest trees and the most sunshine.  To perform routine maintenance I must traverse this area frequently with my lil tractor and wagon.  Having to get off the tractor to open and close gates is a hassle, and I have yet to be able to build a rabbit-proof gate.

Variations on a Theme

 

I am converting the hoop houses I built last fall, for reasons that were discussed in the last segment, to use a different design.

 

The basic fence box or frame is a rectangular box and is open on top for easy access to the crops inside the box.  The box lifts off easily when closer access is needed.  This is the summer box.  For winter use I could just wrap this in plastic, but the top would collect rain and snow and probably pull loose.  I thought about incorporating bows to support the top, but adding stress back into the frame is something I wanted to avoid.

 

This house-shaped addition will effectively shed rain and snow when covered with plastic and adds no stress to the frame, so I don’t need to use glue in assembling it.  It will offer enough height that even Brussels Sprouts can grow down the center two rows and not be brushing up along the wet cover for my winter crops.

 

The tricky joint is made from a tee in the side rail and two elbows, all joined together with short lengths of pipe.

 

For those crops that need something to climb on I built a special split box with a trellis section in the back fastened to the wooden garden box and a three sided fence box…

 

…that lifts out of the way to allow me access for planting and weeding.

 

I used some of the bows from the Hoop Houses to construct a frame to support bird netting over our blueberry plants.  This is a short term solution.  Once the bushes get some size to them…

 

I’ll extend these hoops with more saved from the last design to create arches from the front of the blueberry bed to the top of the grape arbor built right behind.  I’ll extend these arches out the other end to enclose the strawberry bed as well.  These three structures were sized and placed so I could cover the whole assembly with bird netting to protect them.  The quarter-circle ends (one must include a door of some kind) will be the only tricky part. 

Building the Frames

 

The basic frame is a box 46 inches square by 24 inches tall.  No great challenge here.  However, standard plumbing fittings would make this task daunting.

 

I found this fitting at Lowe’s, it’s called a “90 degree elbow with side port”.  I do not think it’s a standard fitting as I’ve never encountered it before – but I’m not a plumber.  But it works great for building square corners!

 

My workshop is equipped with a chop saw (aka compound miter saw) with a long stock support table and fence.  This makes it a snap to set up for cutting identical lengths.  If you are not so fortunate, a tape measure, sharpie and a hacksaw will do the trick.

Using this set-up it takes only a couple of minutes to cut all the straight parts and assemble with corners.  Be sure you seat all the connectors fully by tapping or squeezing them.  I do not use any form of glue or cement.  Friction is good for now, once the chicken wire is added that will hold the frame together as I move it about.   

Doing Chicken Wire the Hard Way

 

I already had a large roll of 48” high chicken wire (poultry mesh) that I had bought to sheath the hoop houses.  I figured I’d use that rather than spending more money on a roll of 24” mesh.  This proved to be penny wise and pound foolish.

I tried two ways of doing this.  One is to cut 24” high segments off the 48” wide roll of mesh; four for each box.  Sliding my arm through this gash as I snipped the wires resulted in some bothersome lacerations to my arms because of the many sharp pointy bits left sticking out of the cut.

 

Add to that the fact that in order to keep from sticking myself every time I handled the frame, I needed to bend over the prickly bits, at least along the top.

Then there was the task of folding and joining the four loose panels of wire mesh at the corners: 48” wide mesh, boxes that are 46” outside dimension leave approximately 44” inside.  Cutting the mesh off on one end didn’t work well because it cuts away the neat, reinforced edge wire.  So folding, fitting and wiring both pieces to the posts, then more wire to hold the “flaps” down.  This was time consuming.

 

I tried cutting a 16 foot length off the roll and splitting it in half.  This allowed me to use the finished edge of both strips at the top of the box.  Start at one post, apply the wire *inside* the posts (to provide an air gap when I cover the outside in plastic for the winter so the wire doesn’t rust so badly) work around the box and back to the starting post.  Only one “flap” corner to deal with and I can cut away most of the excess here then weave the prickly bits sticking out into the wire to hold it flat.

This is better, but I’m still ripping up my arm cutting the wire.  Now I’m wrestling with the wire in 16 foot lengths instead of 2, and…

 

There is a center wire down the middle of the 48” span.  This makes it ideal for my purpose – on one side.  The other side is left with a ragged edge filled with long prickly wires and very little strength, meaning many more attachment points needed.  Still a lot of work and harm done to my flesh.

The Easy Way

 

Just go buy the roll of 24 inch mesh and be done with it!  I’ll use the 48” mesh on something else.  I attach the mesh to all corner posts first, then go back and secure it to the top and bottom rails. 

 

I used standard bailing wire to fasten the poultry mesh to the rails and posts because… well… because I had bailing wire on hand.  And because it works well.  Bailing wire will rust fairly quickly and makes orange stains on your pretty white pipe.  But it won’t rust through for a long time, it’s malleable and it’s strong.  I also had some lighter gauge galvanized wire.  This would not rust so fast, but it proved to be brittle and many of my lashings ended with the wire snapping as soon as any tension came into the joint.

 

You quickly learn what the ideal length is.  It helped me a lot to make sure I lap the two pieces the same way each time so I’d be twisting the same direction each time.  The end pointing to the right is in front of the end pointing up; that means that twisting these so the top rotates toward me will twist them around each other.  Doing this consistently saves confusion and do-overs.

 

Grip the wires with the pliers at the junction and give it a twist or two to secure them.  Gripping both ends evenly twists both around the other, get off-kilter and one will remain straight with the other winding around it: not nearly as strong.

 

I also found it beneficial to size the uprights so the mesh fits between the upper and lower rails.  No big issue on the upper rail if it overlaps or even protrudes above, but this keeps the wire away from the damp soil under the lower rail, thus helping to prevent rapid rust-out of the mesh.

There ya have it.  Nothing too challenging about any of this once I had the right materials.

I will mention that on the tall trellis panels I use two lengths of 24” mesh run vertically with the finished edges attached to the side poles and overlapping at the center.  A few stitches with light wire to tack the overlap together and the whole thing came together easily.

 

Because I had a bunch of extra fittings lying around I decided to make up planting aids.  Again, no glue, so if I end up needing the fittings for something more important I can easily recover them.  Each is 12 inches square, the one helps me plant 4, 8 or 16 plants to a square foot, the other covers 9 and 1.  It was a novelty at first, but I’ve found it very useful.

So, what did you think?  Find anything useful here?  Do you have suggestions?  Feel free to share!

This year’s garden is a major expansion of what we had last year, reaching up a sunny slope and installing another 16 boxes (there are two more behind the barn that you cannot see).  The old garden occupied the only “flat” area of our so-called lawn (and that was not especially flat or level).  The expansion reaches up a slope that is 20-25 degrees in many places.  If I just flop the boxes out on the grass and leave them, the soil mixture will tend to wash out the low corners in heavy spring rains, often taking some of the seedlings with it.  To keep everything where it belongs I must level the boxes.  These don’t have to be perfectly level, but better than they are now.

In getting this task done I’ve developed and perfected a technique for accomplishing the task in a minimum of time and bother.  I’d like to share that with you here.

 Start by building the boxes, installing the weed cloth bottoms to the lower edges with plenty of staples and lay the boxes out in roughly the right positions.  No need to get real fussy yet. 

Last year I used a rather cumbersome method of digging in each box, clearing out the interior dirt then laying in weed cloth and stapling it to the inside faces of the box.  Don’t do that.  Grass and weeds have no problem pushing up in the spaces between staples along the sides of the boxes and removing them is tough because they’re actually rooted outside the box.  If you must go this route, add a thin batten over the weed cloth and nail or staple it liberally to pinch off any entry route.  This year I fastened the cloth to the bottom edges of the box so the weight of the frame will help close off potential entry points.  At least that’s the theory.  I probably should have used battens here too, but I didn’t.  We’ll see how this works out.

Required tools:

• Garden spade (round nose)
• Square nose shovel
• Carpenter’s level (or equivalent)
• Digging frame (you can use a box without cloth on it or build a frame of 2x4 that is much easier to lift in and out)
• At least 4 marker sticks: these could be straight sticks, scraps of wood, light rebar, tent stakes, whatever you have on hand

Not required but very handy:

• A supervisor/inspector.   Meet Zadie; she’s my overseer on this project.
• A lawn tractor and wagon for hauling away the dirt you dig out.
• A wheelbarrow or garden cart for hauling away the sod you dig out.
• Two tall sticks or poles and enough heavy twine to reach across the widest run of boxes you will have.
• A measuring tape.

Start by checking your lay-out.  If you’re adding to an existing garden (like I am) you will want to even out spacing so the new rows line up pretty well with the old ones.  At least I do… but I’m fussier than some about such  things.  Make sure you leave some aisles wide enough to get hauling equipment through.  I paired up rows with a walking aisle between, then left wide aisles between pairs for my lawn tractor (think streets and an alley).  Being able to get the tractor and wagon in will vastly reduce the manual carrying of supplies when I start making up dirt to fill the boxes – and I need to be able to traverse the array of boxes in order to perform other yard maintenance.

As you start digging in the boxes, you can, if you want, drive the stakes in at each end and run the twine between them.  Line up one edge of the boxes with the twine.  Tie one end with a simple knot so the twine can be removed and rolled up during digging sessions, but can easily be put back up to check alignment for final positioning.

With the box in position, poke two marker sticks right next to the box, 12” to 18” out from the lowest corner to mark the position of the box.  Then set your level in with one end snugged into the second lowest corner and swing the other end up and down until the bubble centers in the sight (is level).  The line now described by your level is the “tipping line” of that box: everything above that line will get dug out, everything below that line will get built up.  Sight along the level and install your other two markers  6 inches or so out from the edge of the box to mark your tipping line yet give you room to work.

Why not just dig out everything from the low corner and up?  Because in several cases that would mean the deep corner would have been 24 inches or more deep.  That’s a lot of digging, a lot of dirt to haul and a lot of lumber needed to build the box up enough to deflect rain water so the box doesn’t get washed out by torrential run-off or polluted with lawn debris and mud.  The tipping line is a good compromise and is a technique used by home builders to establish a house seat for new construction in the mountains.

Before you remove the box, use the garden spade to cut straight down about 3” out from the box around the outside of the box to cut the sod above the tipping line.  Remove the box and do it again around the inside of the box.  If the box has been sitting on the grass for a few days the grass under the frame will have yellowed, making it easy to see where the box frame sat.  The grass inside the frame will continue to grow because the weed cloth does not block the sunlight like heavy black plastic would, but it also allows water to drain through.  Use the weed cloth, not plastic.
 

 

 

 

 
 You have defined your edge trench.  Remove the sod.  

 

 

 

 

 

   

Then, starting at the ground-level corner of your tipping line, (front right in this case) start removing soil to from the trench toward the back corner.  Check your progress often with the level.  Digging a level trench into a slope is tricky to do, make use of that level.

I like to use the spade for most of my digging and the square nose shovel for trimming up and debris removal.

 

 

 
When you get to the back corner, tamp down the soil in the corner to provide a clear demarcation;  leaving it as loose soil will make it difficult to maintain when you turn the corner and loose dirt falls in on top of it.  Along the back side you will have to eyeball it as best you can until the level fits into the trench.  Keep the tamped corner clean so you have a good reference point to work with. 

 

 

 

 

  

When done, tamp the far corner and start cutting the trench coming back “up” out of the ground to the tipping point.  Your tipping line is a fixed reference point.  Lay the level on the tamped back corner and the tipping line and it will tell you how much you need to build up the raised corner.

 

 

 

 

 

Testing time – if you’ve done this well you can now set your digging frame in place and the level will confirm your diligence.  If you’re not level (or at least pretty close) remove the frame and adjust.  When you’re happy with it, leave the frame in place and start digging out the interior dirt.  Again, the spade makes cutting into the dirt easier, the square shovel makes smoothing faster.

 

 

 

  

This is the point where Zadie felt it necessary to step in and supervise.  Is this trust or what?

 

 

 

 

 

 
 Getting close: moving dirt from the high side to the low side, smoothing as I go.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Hey, you missed a spot; right there, it’s a little too high, scrape that down some.

 

 

 

 

 

  

OK, feels good and flat to me – Good Job! Take five and get a drink of water.

 

 

 

 

 

   

I tried to plan things so I started with the hardest boxes and worked my way toward the easier ones so as I got stiff and sore, the old bod would handle it better.  And that worked out nicely except for the last box. It turned out to be on a spot with a steep drop-off and required a lot for digging – UGH!

 

 

 

 

 
Lift the digging frame out of the way and remove or tamp any loose debris.

Then set your garden box in place.  Eye-ball it (or string it if you’re fussy) to be sure it lines up.  Do NOT back-fill the trenches outside of the box yet.  If you want to back fill, do it after you have the box filled with soil mix to weight it down and hold it in position during back-filling.  I hope to back-fill with gravel to help promote drainage and slow down rotting of the boxes.

I used #2 grade construction pine 2x8s for these boxes instead of pressure treated lumber because I don’t want the treatment leeching into the soil in which I’ll be growing our food.  And this it quite a bit cheaper.  These should last 4 to 5 years.  By that time I may be ready to replace the wooden boxes with narrow cinder block.   That will probably out-last me.

Now, about that sod I dug out.  I could have just thrown it into the wagon with the dirt to be used to fill in dips and ruts in the lawn, but I had another thought.  We have a series of these balds where rushing water has washed away the soil and the grass, exposing tree roots that are a hazard to the mower and making ugly spots that will only get worse because there is no chance that grass seed will take hold here.

 So, I moved the sod from the boxes into the balds.  We’re getting a lot of rain right now.  Between rains I water in the early mornings.  If the grass dies off I’ll have lost nothing, but if it takes hold it has solved a problem at no cost whatsoever - at least for a while.

The next step is to build fence boxes to keep the dogs from digging in the dirt or rolling on my young plants and to keep the rabbits out.  But we’ll address that in the next installment.

In this installment of the on-going series of adventures in Square Foot Gardening, we will discuss what plants to plant, how to plant them and how to divide up the planting boxes to plant according to Mel Bartholomew’s method. 

What to Plant 

Instead of browsing the seed catalogs and picking out things that look interesting, I suggest you start deciding what to grow by consulting your grocery store receipts.  What fresh or frozen produce do you buy regularly?  Which are the most expensive?  Use this information to pick your Top Ten or core crops list.  Add to that when we get to the companion planting step. 

How Much Space? 

Each 4 foot x 4 foot planting box is divided into 16 not-quite one foot squares.  In each square you will plant one type of vegetable or herb, how many go into each square depends on the size of the plant. 

Large plants like tomato, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and squash will take up at least one full square.  Medium-large plants like leaf lettuce will plant 4 to a square, medium plants like spinach and onions will plant 9 to a square, and small plants like carrots and radishes will plant 16 to a square. 

Trellising 

Some plants, like squash, will vine all over the place if left to do what they want.  But they can be “trained” onto a trellis so they grow vertically instead of horizontally, then each plant needs only one square.  Tomatoes too can be pruned to bush out or vine up onto a trellis. 

When using a trellis, make sure you set it up on the back side of the box (farthest from the sunshine) so the trellis does not shade the rest of the plants in the box.  I’ll talk more about building the trellis’s later, for now, just decide which ones will be trained up a trellis and where they will need to go. 

Companion Planting 

Some plants offer extra advantage to other plants when they are grown in close proximity to one another; some offer beneficial nutrient exchange, some repel pests that the other are susceptible to.  A great companion planting chart is available from Golden Harvest Organics.  Or if you are using the excellent Grit Garden Planner , information on companion planning is included for each vegetable and flower in the Info windows. Use this information to buddy up your crops. 

Arrange by Height 

As with the trellis, low-to-the-ground crops need to be in front of taller crops so all get their fair share of sunshine. 

Armed with all this information - and how many boxes you have, you can decide how many crops you can grow, and how much of each. 

Remember too that you can re-use squares two or more times each season.  You might put 16 radishes in one square early in the spring.  They mature quickly, when you harvest them, plant carrots.  When those are ready for harvest, plant spinach for a fall crop.  In this way one square can produce multiple foods. 

 Stringing the Box 

The Square Foot Gardening book shows the boxes divided up with strips of thin wood making the grid.  This looks nice, but takes up more room and seems like they will get in the way when I have to add more soil components and mix them in next spring.  So I used nylon string.  This string should not rot way too quickly - it should last one season anyway - and replacing it next year will be simple and cheap. 

If you made marks on the box sides as you built it, your nail locations are already set.  If not, locate the center of each side and drive a 1¼” exterior grade box nail (large head) so that about 1/4” remains sticking up above the rail.  Now divide the space between these center nails and the side rail in half and drive in nails at each location.  You should end up with three nails in each side, equally spaced.  One last nail goes in a corner - be careful not to hit the nails or screws holding the corner together. 

Now find the nail that is diagonally across from the corner nail and tie your string to that nail securely (green X in the drawing).  Then run the string directly across the box to the nail opposite the starting point.  Pull the string taut and wrap it around the nail a couple of times to help keep it taut.  Then hop over to the nail next to where you wrapped the string, go around that nail and back across the box. 

Wrap your string around that nail, hop over to the third nail on that side, round it and back across the box. 

Now, use the corner nail to get you around the corner and to the first nail in the adjacent side, wrap the string around the nail and shoot across the box.  Use the same shoot across, hop down shoot across pattern to run the strings at 90° to the first set and complete your grid. 

 

 

 

When you get to the last nail - which will be just around the corner from where you started, tie the string to the nail securely and cut the string loose from your spool.  It should now look like this. 

Setting Out Your Plants 

I highly recommend making a planting guide for each of your boxes.  In the appendices of the All New Square Foot Gardening book is a handy grid that can be photocopied and used for this purpose.  If you don’t have the book, just draw one out on paper for each box.  Label each page with the box number and which side of the box faces north (or your house or the creek or whatever you use as a landmark) then pencil in each crop name and the number to be planted in the square. 

  

If you have been sprouting seeds indoors as I have, set your seedlings into the soil.  If starting from seed, plant the seeds according to the planting charts and put a check mark or date in the square so you know the seed is in.  You may want to stagger plantings.  Planting a square of radishes each week (or two) will mean you will have 16 fresh radishes coming out each week (or two) all through the season instead of having 80 radishes coming out all at once.  Same with lettuce.  Neither crop can be preserved, both are used fresh.  Most other vegetables can be canned or frozen. 

 Labeling the square as having been planted, with what and when, helps you to avoid accidentally planting something else there, as well as knowing if something happened to your seed.  If germination should take 7-10 days, it’s been two weeks and there is no sign of sprouts, something may have happened to your seed and you may as well plant something else there. 

Reserve squares (or plant quick crops like radishes) for the plants that have to wait for warmer weather. 

 

If your boxes are going into a former garden area, like mine, you will want to lay in some straw, stone or pavers around the boxes to help keep you out of the mud when working the garden after a rain.  If you plunked the boxes down on top of a lawn, this should not be a problem (you DID leave enough room between boxes to mow didn’t you?). 

That’s It

Except for trellis’s, which I will cover next time, that is about all there is to setting-up a Square Foot Garden.  Mr. Bartholomew’s book goes into great detail about the details of planting and the appendices offer charts, and tables that are chock full of info.  I will drop a progress report in here now and again just to let you know how it’s going and to discuss what worked and what didn’t, but this is almost the end of the how-to part for this series. 

I will mention that not all of the vegetables I’m planting are going into the boxes.  I have potatoes, corn, cucumbers, bush beans, watermelon, and added tomatoes, peppers, and squash that will go into the ground. 

I am looking forward to a bountiful harvest as the season progresses, and I wish you the same. 

Thanks for dropping in, feel free to toss your 3 cents worth in below.  But first, here’s a demo of the Grit Garden Planner and the way it can be used for Square Foot gardening as well as traditional gardening.  I’ve found it to be a great help in so many ways. 

Square Foot Gardening: http://www.youtube.com/growveg#p/f/8/dzrNbcW5xZ0  

  

Last year when I put the garden to bed for the winter I pulled out all the nightshades for burning, then tilled everything else under and covered the dirt with a blanket of the fall leaves and grass clippings.  Over the winter we added kitchen scraps and ash from the fireplace.  There was nothing scientific about this, just toss it all in there somewhere.

Changes in the Offing

I was going to need to make major changes to my little garden plot this year; there is too much slope and heavy rains wash away my top soil and re-arrange my crops.  They don’t like being shuffled about and some of them decided they’d rather just die than live an integrated life style.

My first thought was to build several retaining walls of landscape timbers and terrace the garden to level out the growing areas.  Even at the beginning this did not seem like a perfect solution: Some of the retaining walls could get to be around 3 feet tall.  Those would require tie-backs to keep the dirt from pushing the walls over.  If I curved the walls, it would help but making curved walls from straight timbers is a bit problematic itself.  Digging (or drilling) pits for concrete anchors and burying steel tie-rods between anchors and walls is a fair bit of work, and the rods will interfere with tilling.  Then there is the issue of water retention.  Someone who knows this stuff warned me against this plan because water would just drain out the bottom by the terrace walls.

So I began looking for a better solution.  I came across several mentions of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening method, and it seemed like a good alternative.  This system has been around since 1981 and still has many devotees.  This method uses raised boxes filled with a special “dirt” mixture and a grid-work planting lay-out instead of planting in rows.  I decided to give it a whirl.

Building the Boxes

 A couple of weeks ago I borrowed a monster 8 hp rear-tine tiller and worked the garden again.  I won’t use that soil right away, but it will come in handy later.

Then we went to Lowe’s and bought the lumber and deck screws.  I’m going to start with six 4’x4’ boxes, so I bought twelve 8 foot 2x6’s; untreated, and a box of 2½” deck screws.  Total cost $96.00.  I knew I would need 72 screws, but the boxes only give a weight, not the count of screws contained.  They had one pound boxes and 5 pound boxes.  I decided to play it safe and buy the 5 pound box.  I could have used cheaper screws - this box set me back $30, but I was afraid cheaper, interior use screws would rust out and the boxes would fall apart.

 

I started by cutting all the 2x6’s in half and marking a line 1½” in from one end of each.  This helps me center the screws in the adjoining 2x6.

 

Then I drill three shank holes for the screws in just that end of each board.  I used a drill press because I have one handy - and because it insures that the holes are straight and square to the board, but a hand drill would work too.

 

I found a spot where I could stand one 4 foot board upright and lay another on a work counter and get the corners to come together properly.  I could have laid them on the floor, by my old knees complain bitterly when I do a lot of up-and-down, up-and-down stuff, so I prefer to work in a standing position.

I used a QuickClamp to hold the edges of the boards even, and the soft rubber faces helped keep the boards from shifting in and out while I drove the screws with a power screwdriver/drill.  I used a small framing square to get it close to square, but wasn’t going to get to obsessive about that.  This is not furniture after all.

 

I built each box in two steps, by first making two ‘L’ shaped sub-assemblies, then flipped one over and set it atop the other and drove in the screws.  This seemed to work better than trying to attach each side one at a time and having to roll the assembly around… especially at the point where it would be ‘U’ shaped and the chances of cracking one of those loose legs is pretty high.

 

While I have easy access, I take the chance to mark the top edges of the box for the grid work that will divide up the planting box.  I will probably just use string as a means of visually dividing up the box for planting, some use wooden slats.  This grid will yield 16 cells per box, each almost 1 foot square - it actually works out to 11 3/4” if you divide up the interior dimension equally.  I taped the yardstick in place for the photo as I am working alone, to do the marking I just held it in place against the left vertical and marked the rail at each point.

 

As I get them done, I carry the boxes out and set them on my loading dock and out of my way.  Three done, three to go.

 

As it turned out, when all six boxes were done, I had more than half of the box of screws left.  Two one pound boxes probably would have been sufficient for 6 boxes.  Oh, well, I’ll probably be building more, I’ll use these up eventually.

 

Then I spent about 3 hours scraping the composted, rich top soil back out of the area where I want to mount the boxes, and digging three of them in so they are level.

Good Dirt; Good Start

Our soil here is fractal red clay.  Red clay has two states of being: if it has rained recently it’s mucky and sticky; if not, it’s hard as concrete.  Neither state is ideal.  Being spring, it has rained - a lot - recently, so the clay under the garden soil was pretty sticky; gumming up my tools and my shoes, but at least I didn’t need a jackhammer!

The composted soil that I removed was nice, black, rich-looking soil and was just infested with earthworms.  It was very gratifying to see that my efforts to amend the red clay last year produced such good results.  I will use this composted soil in the Mel’s Mix that will go back into these boxes once I have them all in place.

This is all I can do for today, I’ll move more top soil and dig in the other three boxes during the evenings next week. 

In my next installment we’ll make up the Mel’s Mix and fill the boxes.  It should be safe to plant outdoors next week and I’ll transplant the seedlings that have already sprouted in an indoor mini-greenhouse.

Thanks for reading!