A Garden Saturday - New Bed Construction

So on this beautiful Saturday, I finished building the new beds for this year, and got most of the dirt ready in them for planting.


First thing in the morning, this was the state of the beds:

 

Mixing up some homemade potting soil - it's high quality stuff!

 

Peat in a bucket, mixed with water, into the mixing barrow:

 

Recipe from the internet.

 

Bed construction material ready to go:

 

Wetting the potting soil.

 

I turned over the composted mulch in the W long bed and scraped a little of the extra soil towards one end.

 

Preparing the potato beds, E and W.

 

Cardboard against the ground, and old dirt from the long W bed:

 

Amended long W bed with ~2" of homemade potting soil. I'll plant peas/greens here and the good soil will make it easier for the seeds to sprout.

 

E potato bed has enough dirt just from the long E bed.

 

This will be the garlic and onion bed. I put 1-2" of manure down on top of the cardboard to get started.

 

As an experiment, the E potato bed has cardboard on its bottom, and the W potato bed has the garden-center-type cloth stuff. We'll see which works better.

 

Assembled W potato bed:

 

Mixing up dirt for garlic/onions: usual top soil but with extra sand, peat, and lime.

 

Adding new dirt to onion/garlic bed, and liming the E potato bed.

 

Garlic/Onion bed full of dirt. After I plant the sets I will apply ~2" of homemade potting soil.

 

Re-using the giant pile of potato-crushing dirt for the potato beds this year:

 

A missed potato from last year! I found 1 purple potato and 1 kennebec. How... lucky?

 

Last year's potato bed's dirt was plenty to fill up the W potato bed.

 

I also had some left to put in the tomato bed (on top of 1-2" of manure).

 

Adding more dirt (just top soil and peat and lime) to tomato bed. Corn/bean bed cardboard still needs to be cut:

 

Done for the day. Corn/bean and tomato beds still need a little more soil.

 

Last (second) batch of homemade potting soil. I'll put these on top of the potatoes, garlic, and onions after they're planted.

 

5 new beds over the weekend! 112 new square feet of garden space (about double what I used to have).

 

Garage is getting empty as the garden fills up.

 

I've been putting the seed potatoes out in the sunshine on nice days. Their eyes are sprouting slowly but surely.

 

Tomorrow I plan to put the potatoes, onions, and garlic in the ground. I will also sow seeds for peas and greens. There will be lots more exciting photos and stories tomorrow!