My Green Toe: Planting Prep Flashback

"Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest."~Douglas William Jerrold, about Australia, A Land of Plenty

As I was preparing to water our vegetable "crops" this morning, it occurred to me that I had never posted the pictures I had taken on May 17 to better illustrate Anne's and my preparation of our urban vegetable garden beds. This work was done just in advance of our placing of the plantings, purchased in part at the local farmer's market, into the garden. After seeing The Pink Shoe's share the step-by-step images of her preparation of blueberry jam on her blog, I was inspired to go slightly backwards to better catch up to the current status of the gardens.

This first image is of the garden bed as it appeared just before our initial attempts to turn over of the soil. The day before I had removed a small wooden fence which had separated the area from our lawn in the interest of creating more space for the plants. As you can see, Gracie (our dog) was also helping out, too:


This "story" actually begins last year. It was in Spring 2006 that my sons and I constructed our composting pit, the contents of which we had hoped to use in our own gardens. This past Spring saw the fruition of that goal. This year, filled with a years worth kitchen waste (and jack-o-lanterns, as in the first image) and grass clippings, we had plenty to work with:




After tilling the soil in an effort to better turn it over, and removing and weeds, Anne and I willy-nilly dropped a good amount of compost into the dirt. Some of it was rather smelly, which I guess was to be expected:


We then spread it out evenly over the entire area, working it into the soil:


Wallah! It took Anne and I about two days to fully prepare everything for greeting the plantings... this was of course back in May and things have really exploded since then.

Next: "My How Our Garden Has Grown!"

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!