With a friends help, built a few more raised beds. 50% of them finished in the front yard. Getting close to the time of double-digging them so they can rest for the winter. It'll give the microbes and worms time to bring life back to the newly aerated soil. I am finding that even though we have serious clay under the top soil in this area of the country, once it is broken up with a spade fork using Jeavon's method, it starts to break apart and become useful all on its own. The potato bed in the backyard has a section of exposed clay that has been broken up and its continuing to crumble apart. If the worms I find while digging are an indication of anything, then when the soil is loose, the worms are happier. In the top soil area/first 6-10 inches, there are fishing size night crawlers while in the hard pack clay, they are so tiny trying to break through it. I feel I am doing them a service by making it easier to move around. Actually, was quite surprised to find so many. I'm going to take that as a good sign that the soil is halfway decent and not super toxic from years past. Perhaps 5 years of neglect by the previous owners was a good thing. :D
Interesting things happened this afternoon. After placing two 60SF beds up against the sidewalk ( Though on the grass of our property) noticed that people started to wonder what exactly we are getting up to. We laughed when we saw our immediate neighbor (whom normally is not overly sociable) drive by with his family only to stop directly in front of the house, stop for half a minute confused before driving off.
Pretty good day.
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| Its a start : Dec 31, 2011 |
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