Digging up Dirt

A little bit of dirt goes a long way, unless you're trying to fill a giant raised garden bed. Then you need a lot of dirt. Let me demonstrate.

This is the shiny new dirt we purchased. It's all organic, and is all from Colorado, so I'm hoping everything works well together.

This (the dirt in the background, not the draw knife) is the dirt we had left from the hole.

I put a layer a few inches deep right over top of the gravel. That was my buffer so I could mix it up without mixing the gravel into the soil.

This is 3 bags (1.5 cu ft each) of the soil.

This is a bag of the compost (the extra-dark stuff) with more of the fill dirt on top of it. I was really hoping that mixing the soil with the compost with the fill dirt would end up giving me a solid soil base for growing veggies. I have no scientific reason to believe this, but it sort of makes sense.

This is all the different soil mixed up together and spread evenly. This looks good to me. I think I can work with this. Still not enough, though.

I put in the remainder of the bagged soil and added the remainder of the fill dirt. Now I need to mix.

Hoeing ain't easy.

After a lot of work moving dirt back and forth, I got it mixed up well enough that I felt comfortable leaving it alone for the time being. It looks like pretty good dirt, I have to say. It's still a little clumpy, but I'm thinking I'll rake it out a bit more before we plant.

We (meaning my lovely wife) also put together these beautiful hanging baskets. They're small, but they add some color to the yard and make it look a lot more lived-in. I really like them, and I think we'll end up getting more.

We also picked up a couple of super-mini orange trees and got little planters for them. I really hope they do well!

I think they look great sitting on the corners of the garden bed like that, too.

So there you go. Our back yard is still really weedy and not very well taken care of, but we're making progress, and that has to count for something. Thanks for reading!