Making progress on The Danger Zone

From my neck to my knees, my entire body (still) hurts. I think David has recovered from our work on the garden on Wednesday night, but my body is still asking me why I thought that all of that garden work would be a better exercise plan than taking a spinning class! Last year we used two wheelbarrows full of compost for our entire plot, and while things grew pretty well last year, that was not the appropriate amount of compost. And so this year...I think we overcompensated. We used 24 wheelbarrows worth of compost, and spread it evenly all over our garden plot so that we could till all of it into the soil to make planting beds. And since I have to prove that my body is sore for a reason, let me just brag for a moment - I shoveled 18 of the 24 wheelbarrows! I think this is one normal step for most of mankind, but a huge step for people with noodle-arms!

Last year, as a result of not using enough compost, we also did not do a very good job of tilling the soil. After researching how much it would cost to rent a tiller, we decided just to purchase the above garden cultivator from Home Depot. I was super excited to try this out, but it turned out to be difficult to use this tool since the ground had a clay-like texture and was not easy to tear up. I was still able to use it somewhat (and save David a little of the really heavy duty work that involved manually tilling the soil with a hoe).

Our progress! We have made 7 of the 10 planting beds! This took about 3 1/2 hours. We will make the other 3 beds next week and plant our seeds/seedlings.

Last year we had to do A LOT of weeding, especially between planting beds. This year we are trying something a little different; we decided to put weed protectors between the beds so that we will (hopefully) only have to weed the beds themselves.

Last night (Thursday), we also made a door. We were going to continue to make the beds, but then...giant thunderstorms prevailed. I forgot to bring my camera though, so I will have to take a picture of that on our next visit when we finish our prep work.