Manfre

My Vegetable Garden Will Grow Rants

I feel like the only time I find the time and motivation to make a public blog post is when either I’m ranting or I post some code. Sadly as you’ve guessed by the title, I do not have any code to share today.

Alissa and I have been consumed with yard work, which we both enjoy (me more than her). This past weekend’s project was to create a 16 ft x 16 ft raised vegetable garden. It would consist of 3 4 ft wide rows of plants with 2 ft wide walkways between. The project took us the weekend and the cost was around $325, which includes soil delivered, a pick axe, new gloves for me (last ones are still drying from the anti-poison ivy washing), a bag of compost, hose + 100’ soaker hose, framing supplies, plants and seeds. We’ve already started our own compost pile, so the only costs for the next few years will be $20 in plants.

Day One

The day started with a solid 30 minutes of calling garden centers and other businesses that deliver soil. There are a lot of these types of businesses in the area, but most will only deliver large quantities (10+ yards). We were referred to Page Road Garden Center who would delivery “small” quantities and was able to delivery that day. We ordered 4 yards of what was described as a 50/50 mix of screened topsoil and compost, which would have been perfect for our garden and our backs. I intentionally wanted premixed soil so that I wouldn’t have to do it myself with a shovel. I knew I would be tired from all the other work required for the day. Unfortunately, their regular topsoil is either way overpriced at $26/yard or we were not delivered the topsoil/compost mix that we ordered.

Dirt was ordered so I moved on to the next task, removing ~256 sq. ft. of grass and gravel. The previous owner installed a compacted gravel driveway running throughout most of the backyard. A tiller would have made short work of the grass, but my brother the landscaper told me, “it doesn’t make sense to buy one since even I only need to rent one at most a couple days per year”. I didn’t bother looking in to renting one either, since it would be expensive, even more so when it broke on the massive rocks an inch or so below the grass. That is one of the main reasons this is a raised bed.

A few hours later, the garden area was cleared, the compacted gravel was loosened up with a pick axe and I had put the corner pieces of the frame in place. During our daily pilgrimage to Lowes, we bought 8 pieces of 2 in. x 8 in. x 8 ft. wood to form the frame, metal truss plate and corner joints used for traditional construction. We would have bought 16 ft pieces, but we have yet to purchase our mandatory pickup truck with gun rack. Some one else had just rented the truck, which looked to small for 16 ft pieces of wood.

The dirt delivery arrived sometime after 4:30pm, which was over 3 hours later than stated over the phone. When I ordered, I assumed it would arrive up to an hour late. At 2:30pm, I called and was told our dirt was “the next delivery”. I didn’t mind the extra time to rest, since it was a hot day and I was exerting my way towards heat stroke. The driver was kind enough to drop the dirt right in the center of our soon to be garden. As we started to spread the soil, it didn’t seem like it had much (if any) compost in it. It was topsoil with some mulch in it. I’m not sure if the mulch just happened to be the previous delivery, or if they call that compost. We kept spreading, since its not like we could call them back up and expect them to come shovel it back in to a truck and refund our money. The most I can really do is let them know I’m an unhappy customer, post a rant on to the internet-tubes and hopefully spare some one else from our dissatisfaction.

Day Two

I got an early start and finished leveling out the garden and then I trenched 100’ of soaker house ~1 in. below the surface, spaced 1 ft from the edges in a square wave pattern with a long span over the walk ways. The poor quality of the dirt was made even more apparent after we soaked it. Oh well… At the end of the day, we had plants in the ground and a plan to fix the soil with worms and other organic stuff.

Since we have plenty of space, I wanted to try planting corn back by the shed. I spent about 30 minutes with the pick axe breaking up the compacted dirt to make 4× 8 ft rows for the corn. I mixed in 2 cu ft of miracle grow vege soil mix and then planted 3 different types of corn. I shifted some of the straw covering the areas where grass definitely is not growing and then watered it from the rain barrels.

We still need to put up some sort of rabbit fencing around the garden, which should cost about $50. The mini corn field should be fenced too, but it’s not really worth the cost since I don’t expect any corn to be harvested.

What We Planted

This is the list of everything we planted (or expect to plant) and the amount of square feet used.

• Different varieties of tomato plants (56 sq. ft.)
• Cantelopes (20 sq. ft.)
• Peppers – Bell and various hot peppers (70 sq. ft.)
• Tomatillo (4 sq. ft.)
• Herbs – Basil, Parsley, etc (4 sq. ft.)
• Strawberries (8 sq. ft.)
• String Beans (8 sq. ft.)
• Lettuce (8 sq. ft.)

• Cucumbers (8 sq. ft.)

Later that evening, the sky opened up and dumped about 2-3 inches of rain in the span of 90 minutes. Our garden was a soupy mess. The puddles drained away completely overnight, only to be replaced with more down pours on Monday. Hopefully the plants survive the crap-less soil and flooding to yield us something. If the plants do die, I hope it happens in the next day or so, since they were the cheapest part of this project; $10 for 3 strawberry plants and $20 for the rest of the plants and seeds.

At least we were able to fill the fountain completely with rain water. The fountain was missing the drainage plug, so I made one out of duct tape, which so far is holding well. It only needs to last until a rubber plug is purchased.

Posted by Michael Manfre, Apr 28, 10:51 PM
Filed under: Random Babble

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