Getting closer

So Sorry for the lack of updates, but between getting sick, and the weather we've had these past few weeks,I haven't had much time to do anything, so nothing to post.  Today finally turned out nice, and I was feeling good, so I turned all my beds again to further mix in the compost manure, and mix in some potash.  The soil looked pretty good this time when I turned it, most of the manure was dissolved and absorbed, and there was a fine dark brown color throughout.  There were also plenty of earthworms in the beds, I would estimate about 10-20 big fat ones that I saw in each of the large beds.  I also picked up my seeds today, and will be starting them indoors tomorrow, with hopes of putting most of the starts in the ground in 2 weeks or so.  More to come, thanks for checking in!

What's a garden with no compost bin?

So I built one. I'll need to come back and edit this to include the process, but here are some pictures of what I did

I still need to cut the holes in the sides for ventilation, but you get the idea.

Sunday's Digging

I spent today turning the last 3 of my in ground beds.  The area was completely grown over with grass and moss:

First, I used a square nose shovel to perforate the grass around the perimeter of my beds, and then removed the sod layer from the top and set it aside for compost later, I spotted quite a few worms, it should be pretty good!  Next, I used a regular shovel to turn the dirt underneath once.  After that, I spread on about 2 inches of composted horse manure, and turned the soil two more times to break up large chunks of soil and mix it in well.

The outline of my hops patch, minus the sod:

Turned once, with manure on top:

Turned 2 more times and raked:

Outline of my barley patch, sod partially removed:

Barley patch fully cleared:

I didn't have time to take pictures of mixing in the manure for the barley patch, it started to rain and I didnt want to get my camera wet, so I finished up and went inside to plan my compost bin design and go to the hardware store to get supplies for it.

The Map

So, before I got too deep into this project, I had to take some stock of my available space and think about what I wanted and how to bring it to life.  There has been a garden in this space infrequently for 5 years or so, but most of it is fairly heavily overgrown right now. All the raised beds are from previous years, and are outlined in thin black lines.  The areas with thicker black outlines are to be directly in the ground.  The green is a very rough idea of the row layout.

All turned and fertilized!

So here's what it looks like so far after todays digging, in the next post I will outline the digging process I have been using.