Two weeks later we finished spreading the compost and tilling the garden.

Jessi’s half is on the left; Chris’s half is on the right. Let the games begin!

One long weekend, sunshine, and several shovels full of dirt turned the giant mounds of compost pictured in my last post into this:

We actually expanded the garden a bit this year, so the first step was renting a sod cutter, and removing more grass. Then we spread the compost, amended the dirt with lime, rock phosphate, and green sand … and Chris tilled! This is only half of the garden – there’s still another pile to be dealt with.

We got a second arbor, which I put up this weekend along with some sections of the fence. It’s getting there… I’m hoping to find time to dig out the rows in this half (“my garden”) this week and start planting next weekend. Chris already has one row in “his garden” planted.

This took some work. Lawn soil is very, very compacted. We tilled peat moss, organic top soil (because I dug it all up with the grass), and manure into the area, and then I made the beds all by myself. They are wider than the beds in the back, and I hope they will work well for vegetables!

My great aunt has been receiving packages of carrot seeds in the mail from one of those organizations that fight hunger in impoverished lands. She has been sending the carrot seeds to me, so we planted them in the back yesterday. I think she has finally started returning the carrots and telling them to teach the hungry people to plant their own seeds.

I also planted Shiraz Tall Top beets in the back, and a whole ton of yellow onion sets.

We wanted more garden space, so here it is: right in the front yard.

It is NOT easy cutting out grass. But I probably saved a summer’s worth of weeding by getting rid of it. The soil is so compact, and it’s going to need a lot of peat moss and topsoil before we plant.

The garden in the back: we tilled, added peat moss, dug new raised beds, and placed straw down in the rows. The onions sprouted up from last year – they never got big enough to harvest, and I didn’t want to just till them under this year.

The “back” part of the garden (behind the onions, in this photo) is mostly clay and really heavy. The plan is to plant a cover crop and legume (fenugreek) there this year to prevent it from turning to weeds and for green manure for next year.