Diggin' With Dixie

I had intended to chronicle this as I went, but that didn't happen. I was too busy playing in the dirt and hanging around the forum at Square Foot Gardening and the SFG Forum at Gardenwebs. Be sure to check them out - lots of great information from very friendly people.

(Excuse the mess...we had just finished a remodeling project, have a big orange dumpster & lots of trash to clean up, but that will all have to wait til I get my garden planted.)

Here's what has happened so far:

MARCH 23, 2010:  First I had to dig up a lot of iris & peonies. Here is a tub of peony rootstock from my grandmother's family, well over 100 years old, and some iris to transplant.  I also gave lots of iris away.

Here is where my new Square Foot Garden boxes will be.  It is my front yard, which turned out to be an odd terraced area when we added a basement addition to our house a few years ago.

 

Isn't this beautiful?  Only a fellow gardener would understand.  See the classic VW's in the background?  DH restores these & does a great job at it.  I found my compost on Craig's List and it was delivered  in about 2 hours.  Living out in the country has definite advantages - you can have 13 yards of compost dumped on your driveway if you want to. 

While we are at it, here is where my blackberry patch will be.  It is quite long, but doesn't look like it from this angle.   I have 3 Triple Crown plants in the middle and this end has bookoodles of red garlic from the grocery store that I forgot to dig up last Fall.

This is the lower side of the retaining wall.  I have put in a potato bed since this picture was taken and will have a compost pile here.  It will be really handy to just toss trimmings into it.

Now, back to my compost.  This is some good stuff - not like the bags of composted manure from the big box stores that seem to be mainly burnt wood chips.

I had to buy a new Mantis tiller this year, the transmission finally went out on the other one.  I would probably still be using it except I got a good sized rock stuck between the tines.  This is my third one since the 1980's.  I don't know how I could garden without it.  They seem to last forever and almost always start on the first pull.   They are everything the advertisements say they are, plus things they never even thought of (see the pictures of Mel's Mix being mixed below).

DH definitely didn't want his picture taken.  Too bad.  The following pics are of the boxes being prepared.  When our son showed up the work went a lot faster.

They got 3 boxes finished before quitting for the day.  That's quite an accomplishment (and expression of love) after already doing a full day's work.

One granddaughter was excited about it, one wasn't.......