Friday, September 21, 2012

both feet

Yesterday, we closed on the sale of our house in California. We didn't make a dime on the place, but it was a very good day indeed.

HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY.


I celebrated today by digging a fall garden bed next to the south side of the house. My seeds will be sown a little late, but I figure it can't hurt to spend a couple bucks to see what happens. And I like playing in the dirt.

Getting the top layer of grass off was the easy part.

Getting all the rocks out was not.
Wait til I show you my rock piles (yea, that's plural) in a future post.

Needless to say, I accumulated quite a few blisters today.

I've had this cheapie soil test kit for probably ten years now, so I wasn't sure how accurate it would be.

It said our pH was fairly neutral, but I'm skeptical about the NPK analysis
because none of the resulting colors were even on the chart.

That motherfucker right there required the wrecking bar to get out. I hate that rock.

Next time we're at Lowe's, I might pick up another soil test kit, but there's not really any doubt that I need nutrients, so I might just buy some bagged mushroom compost for now and work it in. It kills me to buy packaged compost, but I could only find one source of bulk mushroom compost, and that's southwest of Knoxville, so it may be another week or two before I get a bulk load in. The Tacoma bed only fits about a half cubic yard of material, so we're trying to figure out whether to rent a dump truck that will be able to fit several cubic yards (for building spring beds).

Ideally, I would have sheet mulched this area instead of digging and planted some crops that will loosen the soil without the need for back-breaking work, but I needed to get this done quickly so I can get a fall garden going. It sure didn't feel quick, though. And I still have about a third of it left to de-rock.

Sure feels good to now have both feet firmly planted on Tennessee soil! Literally and figuratively.

2 comments:

  1. Ideally you would've sheet mulched, composted, sown green manure, rinse, repeat, and in three years you'd have your first, very lovely, potato. Much as I love permaculture, organic, no-dig, and even biodynamics, sometimes you need to just. get. started. NOW. :)

    My last garden, I double dug. This time we're doing vegetables on nearly an acre and I promise you I'm not sheet mulching an acre and waiting, much less double digging it. I may even bring in a rototiller (gasp!) to get going asap on part of it, and then doing more soil building things over time to expand.

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    1. Exactly! I felt like a traitor or something when I started digging. But all those rocks had to go. For the spring garden, we'll be trucking in mushroom compost soon that we'll let mellow over fall and winter while I sheet mulch the bed outlines with cardboard (held in place by all those great rocks), and then build raised beds with that in spring -- I did this with my last garden in California, and it worked like a champ. THEN I'll be able to let certain beds go fallow and plant cover crops and do all that fun permaculture-y stuff. ;)

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