The Big Dig

One of the things I really really wanted to do in the springtime was to better prepare our garden spots for the growing season. We kind of have two - both on the north side of the house, on either side of the fence between the front and back yards. The dirt there is pretty bad and besides was way to high above the borders of the plots. So I did some searching and found a company that would deliver a dumpster to our house and let us fill it up with dirt to a certain height and wasn't too pricey. So we ordered it up, and had a week to fill it up.

Here's the very depressing start:

Whelp...dirt is way heavier than you'd think. I dug. And dug. And dug. And carted it with the wheelbarrow over and over and over. It didn't feel like I made much of a dent. Troy pitched in when he could, and with his help we started making actual progress. We finally got the two plots pretty level and even were able to remove some of the dirt clear in the back of our yard on the east fence. There's a long way to go back there but, there is at least a dent. Chase was even coerced into helping us dig on our last day. 

Here's the funny part. I got a little mixed up between the depth of the dirt we were allowed to put in, and the weight of the dirt we were allowed to put in before we had to pay an additional charge. We definitely had to pay an additional charge. But hey, they took it away and it still cost less than I expected it to be when I first started looking. The amazing thing is that they told us how much dirt we had loaded into the dumpster. That would be SIX TONS, ladies and gentlemen. We moved six tons of dirt into that thing, and it was a little hard to tell where we had taken the dirt from. 

And the garden is better this year. Not great, yet. I think our dirt still needs a lot of love. But I did do some composting there as well as adding some soil pep. Next year we will add a LOT of soil pep and keep composting. (Yay for chickens!) Why do I love composting and making dirt happy? I don't know. But I do. We had some pretty sad looking tomatoes and the peas didn't do very well. But now that we have figured out a better watering system there are a few plants like pumpkins, tomatillos and a couple of the tomato plants that are going crazy. It's so much fun. I love gardening. I wish I was better at it.