Raised Beds and a Mountain of Dirt

While we were playing lumberjacks on Saturday I had a load of dirt delivered. Mr. B told me to get five yards of dirt. So I ordered five yards, the guy said he would bring a truck load, it would be between five and six yards.

It's a mountain of dirt!

Don't worry we had big plans for this mountain. And I have a few back ups in case we still have extra dirt.

One of the main plans was constructing a raised bed along the sides of the goose run. We can't expand our vegetable garden any further in the area we have it with out cutting down a tree. So I thought we could plant some things in different areas of the yard. Who says they all need to be in the same plot o' mud.

Mr. B framed these up for me, based on my rough description on hand motions. He's getting really good at deciphering what I want.

Then we filled it with a layer of leaf compost.  We dumped most of our leaves at the edge of the woods past two falls. This spring we dug down through the top layer to get at the good stuff underneath. It will continue to break down and feed the plants in the garden.

Last year I kept asking Mr. B to help me build some compost bins, it would be nice to have and most of my flower beds could benefit from some good food. He kept telling me no. Well while we were working on this endeavor he agreed that something to contain the leaves/compost would be easier. We will be building some simple three sided corral for composting soon.

After the compost came the dirt. Several garden carts full. Praise the Lord we didn't have to wheelbarrow it. It's been enough work just shoveling it. We also moved some to the front flower bed. I'm hoping to show you that in a few days when its not just a pile of dirt, but has some plants in it.

Now all we need is the plants. I'm thinking asparagus on one side, as it comes back every year. And the cucumbers and zucchinis on the other, as they take up a bit of garden space and are lower maintenance compared to the tomatoes.

Oh and we will need a fence around it. We have to sassy boys who want to eat everything they are not supposed to. Bruce, Christmas, I'm talking about you.

As for the mountain of dirt I would say we still have about 1/2 to 1/3 of it left. I guess we might have to implement the back up plans. Oh darn.