Heart of the Garden

We built a raised bed and finally had the opportunity to start fresh with well-fed soil. I called a local CSA, Volmecke Orchards, to see if they sold compost and voila. They were more than happy to make some dough from their composted Fall leaves.

We drove our old truck over to their giant pile and their back hoe dumped a rounded bed-full of compost, enough to flatten tires. (Actually HE drove because I’m still afraid of learning STICK! It’s a legit phobia I tell you.) We were really nervous about getting pulled over on the drive home. I don’t know why this happens so often. We’re not even living on a farm, but I feel like I’m always either fearing for my life or skirting the limits of the law.

We didn’t make any calculations about how many cubic feet we needed. I will take as much compost as I can get.

Garden Maths: My goal was to make the beds 30-50% compost, plus a 1 inch top layer of compost to keep weeds down.

Of course we can’t drive on our leach field so we had to dump the compost into the wheel barrel and push it uphill to the bed where I mixed it with the existing soil that is actually well populated with earth worms.

More Garden Maths: I read somewheres that good soil should have about 10-50 worms per cubic foot.