We spent the afternoon setting up our vegetable garden. The first step, tilling the existing soil, took fully half of the afternoon. Ian borrowed a hoe from our next-door neighbour and used that while I used a hand trowel. My back isn't that good and using a long-handled tool ends up putting too much strain on my back. It turned out that I like sitting there playing in the dirt.
The reason that tilling took that long was because our soil was so compacted and filled with rocks. It's a good thing that we didn't go out and buy new rocks for the waterfall because we dug up more than enough rocks of all different sizes in our vegetable garden.
Once we got the soil all overturned, we mixed half of the new soil we received last week with the existing soil to create a transition zone between the completely new and old soil. We spread the other half on top of the mixed soil and we were ready.
We transplanted most of our sweet peppers into the garden as well as some cabbage plants, some cucumbers, and some zucchini. We learned in a seminar at a local nursery that hot peppers and sweet peppers can cross-pollinate, resulting in hot peppers everywhere. So we're keeping the hot peppers in the greenhouse and the sweet peppers in the garden. Anyways, we also planted some small potatoes that had sprouted and some garlic that was also sprouting. If they grow, great, and if they don't, that's ok, too.
Making the garden was a huge amount of work. Although we both enjoyed working outside all day, we're both physically tired as well as sunburned, sore, and have blisters on our hands. We're also excited about possibly getting to eat things that we grew ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment