The previous garden construction posts took from September 2011 until January 2012 to complete. With the irrigation, raised beds and pergola complete, the only thing remaining was to fill the beds with dirt.
I found a place nearby that advertised their “soil food web” raised bed soil made up of 85% compost and 15% coarse sand. (More on the soil later.) I called them and ordered 10 cubic yards. I also rented a couple jr. highers from church to help.
We started with the easy stuff. We lined the sides of the beds with pond liner. This is because the landscaping timbers are treated wood. The pond liner decreases the likelihood of chemicals to leech into the soil. We also lined the bottom of the beds with paper. The idea was that the paper would block the growth of the buried grass long enough to kill the grass and then the paper would decompose. Instead it ended up decomposing very quickly and not killing anything except a great deal of my time then spent weeding.
Despite the help, moving the dirt was incredibly difficult. Early Saturday morning, this was dropped off on our driveway by a small dump truck.
Two wheelbarrows, four shovels, two rakes, four people and by noon, we were a little better than half done. That’s when our help had to leave. My wife, Christina, hung in there and helped with the remainder. We did take a break to eat and take a nap from about 1 to 3pm. After that, she got motivated enough to get the pile of dirt off of our driveway that she got me moving again. We worked until the pile had been completely moved, finishing about 6pm. The only things left to do were to take pictures and feel miserable. The pictures are below and the miserable feeling lasted several days.
The picture above is without spreading the soil out. Below is with spreading the soil out.
