Getting there, soggily!

Hello again!  The endless rains of May have held me up, but here is what I've been up to in the last month or so.

The first thing I had to do was level the beds.  Originally I thought only one bed, the 3x8, was out of level, and it only by an inch or so.  It turned out to be off by 4", though, and that led me to lay the spirit level on the other beds.  Much to my dismay, I found that several others were also out by 4", and most of the rest by an inch or so.  So, more lumber, stain, predrill, buy stakes, drill those, attach....then pound them into the ground with a sledgehammer.  I thought briefly about staining the stakes, but I was beyond caring at that point.  I just wanted the darn beds in!

May 4:

Between these two pictures....much work! 

 Now multiply by all the other beds (May 8):

After all the beds were leveled, I cut strips of corrugated cardboard and stapled them across all the open gaps between the timbers and the ground so my MM wouldn't wash out.  Happily, I can get all the cardboard I want for free if I am patient.

I finally found my last two composts at Gainesville Topsoil:  Half a yard each of leaf and horse manure compost.  He tipped it into our pickup out of the side of the earthmover's scoop.  A cubic yard is approx. 765 liters or 202 gallons, for visual reference.  Total cost: Under $30.  Buying compost in bulk is definitely the way to go!  (They did have organic compost there, too, at slightly higher cost.  However, it had 10% lime added and I was scared that would make my Mix too basic.  The added lime makes sense around here as our native soil is acidic, but MM is pretty neutral and I didn't want to create a Ph problem in my MM.  So I stuck with composts with no lime added.)

This is much more than the 10 cubic feet I originally said I needed... but that was before I realized the beds would have to be leveled.  Plus I have a 3x4 high-rise and a potato box to fill, too.  Any leftover can go in the compost bins that I have yet to build.

So, the grand mixing day was at hand.  I was dreading it, but it wasn't nearly as awful as I'd feared.  Since I'd had to build up most of the beds to level them, I used the leaf/horse manure mix to fill them to the bottom of the main bed frames.  DH (dear husband) was on the shovel and I carried it in 5 gallon buckets to each bed, and leveled it out roughly with my hands.

After that was the Mel's Mix itself.  Some people mix it in a tarp, or a kiddie play pool, but I decided that for me it might be easiest to mix it right in the beds themselves.  This required some math up front, but the time was worth the effort, as it gave me a list appropriate to both each box and to what I was mixing--portions of a bag or bale, for the vermiculite and peat, respectively, and per the 5-gallon bucket, for the compost.  By lucky accident on my part, the 4x6's and 3x8 each took a whole bag of vermiculite and half a bale of compressed peat, each, which saved a lot of time.  So... I dumped it all into each bed, and mixed it up with my hands.  I was pretty sore the next day from all the lifting and carrying, but the actual mixing was easy; the vermiculite and peat lighten it so much that I didn't have to use much effort.

A few weekends ago, I went to DeBaggio's to buy flowers for out front and a few veggie starts for "insurance".   (Mostly tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos, but I got a few other things as well.  An Imperial Star artichoke, dill, eggplant...)  So here we are with the grids and trellises up and the plants in!

Work still to be done:  

• Build the pole bean trellis
• Install cages around the tomatillos and peppers
• Install irrigation
• Figure out a trellis for the peas
• Fill/plant the high-rise
• Build/plant/start to fill the potato box
• Build the worm tubes (and order/find worms)
• Start thinking about the compost bin
• Find something to lay down over the landscaping fabric

 But, it's almost entirely planted....starting to feel like a real garden! 

In the last few of days I've been drawing up plans for a pole bean trellis.  Initially I'd thought to just use some bamboo poles I already have, but they really aren't tall enough.  Last year my beans climbed to 7' easily and would have gone higher given the chance...I don't think 5-6' poles are going to cut it.  And I'm going to need a good strong trellis for them, too, as I have 6 squares planted full, as opposed to 2 half-squares last year.  (All my conduit trellises are already bespoke for other, bigger plants.)  So, I am a little afraid of the tangle I'm in for.  I bought the parts yesterday, so stay tuned!  I am hoping to copy/modify a plan I saw where instead of the trellis coming together at the top like a tipi, it actually splays outwards so the beans hang down freely and makes them easier to find and pick.  The "Hunt the Bean" game was fun initially last year, but it got old after a while.

Happy gardening!
Megan