Monday, February 5, 2007

Houston, We Have Soil

We went to a local nursery to buy what we need to build the soil for our square foot gardens. We need vermiculite (certified asbestos free), peat moss (sustainable harvested in Canada), and compost. We got just about all we need for 3 beds that will be 8X2 feet, for a total of 48 square feet of gardening space. All we need is another 2 cubic feet of compost; we're thinking we'll drive to a nursery a little farther away to buy mushroom compost.

We don't have an independent nursery in Our Town any longer. We drove into Yucaipa to go to Newell's. I'd never been there and was quite impressed. I could see the employee biting his tongue as we explained what we plan to do, but he was polite about it

Tuesday night we plan to go buy our lumber and fasteners, and then we build the boxes and grids. That might not actually happen until the weekend, but that's okay.

We decided to build our boxes 8X2 instead of 4X4 to maximize the space in our yard. We also figure they'll look a lot like planters, and we can fill them with flowers when it comes time to sell the house (of course, we'll try it first with the veggie garden; the flowers are a back-up plan).

Oh yeah, I got a pitch fork and some weed cloth. I've yet to see these second hand

We figured out that we have plenty of leftover wire fencing to make our compost bin with. My friend gave me seeds to get us started. I have a bucket, gloves, shoes (but I don't think I need waterproof clogs if I don't intend to ever step on my soil), a trowel, a rake, and a few other implements. I think we'll be fine.

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