The Garden Box - The After

Saturday - The Full Day Edition

7:00 - Rise and Shine first thing on a Saturday morning.  Normally I'm an early riser, but the two margaritas from the night before had somehow followed me into the next day and my Merry Sunshine attitude has something of a damper on it.  Fortunately my super cute boyfriend was able to coax me awake as he needed a co-pilot for our soil run.  

7:00 Insert box joke here

8:00 - Pick up the soil.  He ordered the box-filling soil from Gardens of Babylon.  Their pre-bagged soil and delivery were a little high, but Bill was able to snag the farm pick up.  No delivery fees plus way more soils than we needed for significantly less cost.  And the staff is super friendly and helpful.  

Side note: After 5 lab classes on soil and an Agriculture Degree, the most significant thing I could think of at 8am was "Soil is what grows plants, Dirt is what is under your fingernails"

8:00 Big Red filled high with delicious wormy soil

8:30 - Bongo Java.  The Margaritas were kicking in and I had a hard time handling the Garden Day without some Basic Breakfast and coffee in my system.

9:00 - Home Depot.  Mel suggests getting some sort of a weed barrier to line the bottom of the garden box.  Also we were pretty antsy to start growing some plants ASAP, so we decided to pick up some seeds.  "Some" being whatever looked cool.  Since we're anticipating the supply of veggies from the CSA, we opted instead for the strangest looking options available.  More on those as we go.    

11:00- Line the Box and Fill 'er Up - Burlap is down and Bill's got the giant shovel unloading the back of Big Red.  There's no pictures of him while he's unloading because I was manning the rake and spreading the soil around all the edges of the garden box.  For size reference, the box is 10'x4'x1'.  Luckily Bill was man enough for the job.

13:25 - The Square Footing.  Here's where something along the lines of "careful thought and planning" would have come in handy.  We're going by the Square Foot Gardening book (give or take) and while it seems a little absurd to make a grid for a 3'x3' garden, we needed to grid in place to help mark out what gets planted where.  The thought was to nail in 1' increments to attach string grid markers.  However, in our excitement to get the garden going, neither of us thought that maybe it would be easier to hammer in some nails BEFORE adding the soil.  Oops.  Instead I straddled our new soil and opted for some "modified warrior poses" to stretch along and get the nails hammered in the far side of the box.  It also involved Bill working as my pulley system to get me back on solid concrete.  

13:35 - Text from Courtney about her day skiing Moonlight.  While still trying to accomplish nail-and-hammer acrobatics, I secretly was wishing I was skiing Moonlight with my girl.

14:25 - The Grid.  Phew.  Nails in, hot pink string tied into a grid formation.  Ready to rumble

15:45 - Initiate Planting Phase.  Ta-Da!  The sun's getting just a little lower but the garden is ready to be planted!  (I'll save the planting fun and excitement for a little later)  The construction phase of our efforts is finally complete!  Woohoo!!

17:00 Shower and off to Corey's goodbye dinner.  Bill's sweet roommate is off to serve in the Peace Corps in Albania for a couple years.  Sort of bittersweet to have the first one of the boys leave the nest, but I'm excited for all the adventures he'll get to have over his journey these two years.