3 cheers for compost!

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Compost! Compost! Compost! Between moving several wheel barrow loads of delivered organic compost from its giant mound to our raised garden beds and the annual digging out of Darth Vader (our compost bin), Sunday was quite a dirt fest.

To begin, on Saturday night Craig and I joined forces in the basement to put together our new cedar raised bed that I ordered off of ebay from Threemanproducts. I recommend! Great price, and it was fairly easy to assemble—4 cedar boards, corner posts, and screws. All we needed to supply was the drill/driver. And oh, did I bring it. I managed to not once, but twice, jump the screw and catch Craig’s finger. And not just his finger, but right in the crease where the nail and finger meet. Eeeeewwwwww!

I still feel really, really horrible about this.

There was some initial swearing on his part and a plethora of apologies on mine. But he kept reassuring me that he was fine. After that I refused to drive in any more screws. Craig was all too happy to take over. A little blood and sweat, but no tears or hospital trips, thankfully. We got the bed put together in under an hour, which for us is pretty darn good.

Here's what the raised garden bed looks like upside down.

The cedar spikes help anchor the bed in the ground.

Sunday morning we were so excited to get outside and get the bed situated, but we were greeted with a raw and steady spring rain. Luckily the heaviest of the rain stopped just after noon, and we got started.

First we dug holes to help ease the spikes of the raised garden bed into the ground. And then we dug up the ground inside the bed to loosen the soil. This new bed is 3′ x 6′ and 10″ high, so it’ll be great for growing carrots amongst other things… TBD!

We found a serious number of rocks in the soil. And check out the richness of the compost!

It took roughly 5 wheel barrow loads of the organic compost to fill the bed.

Once that bed was done, we moved on to excavating Darth Vader!

Raise the gate! What do we have?

Our compost bin was jammed full, so it was really exciting to see our compost in action since last Spring. Craig scraped and dug out the bottom, and he got almost a full wheel barrow of schtuff.

Dryer lint, egg shells, corn stalks, orange peels, biobags, and all!

Then Craig took the pitchfork to the remainder to give it a good turn. We now have a little breathing room to add more fresh green and brown scraps.

We added our homemade compost to our first two beds. I like to think of them as the “control” since it’s our third year tending the original 3′ x 6′ x 10.5″ and second year tending the 5′ x 6′ x 7.5″.

Can you see the eggshell bits? Not quite broken down all the way, but great for the soil.

Last year I moved our original 3′ x 6′ bed back a few feet to create more growing space when we added the second bed, and this year I built a little add-on front bed for even more growing room.

This is where I planted radish and beet seeds.

We then added more of the organic compost to our new landscaped beds.

The back of this bed will be the cutting garden. The front will be lettuce and baby spinach. And we leveled out the surface under the slate, too.

This round garden bed is where I am going to plant potatoes. Yesterday I planted cilantro, green onions, parsley, dill, and thyme seeds as a border.

Now here is my disclaimer. Until now, I have mostly been a plant-start-kind-of-gal. Last year I planted just 3 things from seed: radishes, carrots, and beets. I started slowly so that I could learn the ropes.

My radishes were incredible. The carrots took forever but were amazing. The beets sucked—they never formed actual beets. But I planted them again this year. Maybe with their own dedicated space, they’ll fare better. Last year my tomatoes sort of swallowed them.

As for herbs, I’ve never grown them in the garden directly from seed. I did grow herbs for my wedding centerpieces last year, but I started them in peat pots. It was a long ordeal, but I’ll save that for a whole other blog post. And I’ve never grown lettuce at all. But I planted lettuce and baby spinach seeds, too, in the front of the new landscaped bed.

I chose this Gourmet Mezcla lettuce blend and Giant Ceasar (Vivian) romaine.

So, to recap… Putting together a raised bed. Carting soil. Shoveling soil. Digging and turning the soil with the pitchfork. Using the wire rake to smooth the surface of the soil. Making seed holes. Dispensing seeds. Covering them up. Patting gently. Over and over. And when we were all done, here was the final product.

Naked and beautiful.

If we’re lucky, we should start to see some sprouts in 5–6 days on the radishes and beets. It’s roughly 7–10 days on the lettuces, spinach, and herbs. The carrots are slow little buggers, so they’ll take a bit longer. I’m more than willing to wait.

Tags: baby spinach, beets, carrots, compost, exercise, gardening, herbs, lettuce, organic, radishes, raised garden bed, spring
Posted in The Growing Season | 5 Comments »