A Sign of Good Soil

Last year, when we removed the sod to create garden beds, we realized that our soil was pretty horrible. It had a high content of sand and clay, and was pretty much void of any good nutrients. So we've been amending the soil a lot by adding in purchased soil, composted manure, peat moss, and our very own homemade compost.  We also grew buckwheat as a cover crop in the Fall.  Well, this year, as I've been planting seedlings into the garden, I've seen a welcomed sight!  Earthworms!  Lots and lots of earthworms!  When we gardened last year, we saw very little earthworms.

This year, practically everywhere we dig, there they are.  Earthworms are a good sign of good soil.  They bring nutrients back into the soil.  Hooray!  Glad we are doing something right!

If you wondered what 800 pounds of dirt looked like...

With one season of gardening under our belt, we decided that we needed to expand our garden. Seriously, do we need a lawn at all?  Raised beds here we come.   If you ever wondered what 800 pounds of soil and compost looked like, well here it is.  I don't think I've ever bought so much dirt, I mean "soil" in my life!  When we got a composter as a present, I was so naive to think that it would create more compost than I needed in the garden.  hahahahaha, silly amateur gardener!  I still get annoyed buying so much soil, but what choice do we have?

We also bought 6 pieces of 2x6 untreated Douglas Fir lumber measuring 8 feet long so we could make 2 raised beds that are 4x8 feet.  Once we loaded all the lumber and 800 pounds of soil / compost into our car it was so heavy that the tires were lower!  I love our Honda Element, so many things can fit in it!

The hubs built these with all the wood we bought and he decided to put spikes or anchors on each corner of the raised bed.  It's not necessary to add these but he wanted to make sure that the bed won't move anywhere.

We removed all the grass and dug up all the rocks in the dirt.  Our backyard has a lot of rocks and glass.  Apparently the previous owners used to bury glass in our yard!  How annoying!

We wheelbarrowed all the rocks and glass away.

 

Then added the bags and bags of compost and soil.  We did a mix of both in each raised bed.  We're using composted manure, going organic all the way again.

It took twelve 40 pound bags to fill the 4x8 ft raised bed. 

We also had some of our compost ready from our compost bin. One compost bin only produced 2 five gallon buckets of rich compost. I was hoping it would produce more, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Look how rich our compost looks compared to the one we bought at the store!

I raked everything together so it was well mixed.

Here are the two raised beds finished.  We plan on putting in two more additional raised beds, a project for another day.