Garden Time!

It was a beautiful sunny weekend and we worked outside in the yard a lot. I got my seeds in the mail, and made a whole plan of when to plant and how to do the garden.

I decided that I won’t be in this house long enough to amend the clay soil enough to plant directly into it. Clay soil, I read, has good drainage and can have good nutrients for plants, but in winter can become waterlogged, and in summer can become super dry. Another problem is compaction, which makes it hard for little plant roots to dig deep in the soil. It’s best to till up the soil in the spring to break up all the clumps that have formed through heavy winter rains, making the soil loose and almost sandy in texture.

So, that sounds good to me. If this was my house, I could work hard to amend the existing soil so that there was less clay and more humus or good top soil, after which I could do some wild, no-till gardening. But under my circumstances, it’s best to go with a quicker solution. Which is: raised mounds.

Adam and I went to the ReBuild Center today and bought some long pieces of siding (all matching Adam’s going to paint paw prints on them . We’re going to check out some kind of tilling tool from the Northeast Portland Tool Library next Saturday (they’re only open on Saturdays from 9-2), and till up the rows which I lasagna mulched in the fall. There’ll be lots of good old chicken manure and compost to mix into the soil. We’re also going to go get a yard of garden soil mix from Grimm’s Fuel, which has compost and other stuff in it (only $25! Not bad!), and throw that on top. The siding will support the mound on either side, but not on the ends, which is why I’m calling it mounds and not beds.

When we’re finished, there should be 3 10′x2′ rows and one 8′x3′ row. Those, along with the existing raised beds I planted in last year, will make up the bulk of the garden. In separate areas there will be a potato tire, a bean teepee, and a bunch of different squash. It’s going to be so AWESOME!