Rethinking Inside the Box

As the fundy Christian said about the capricious weather as he was getting into his kid filled SUV, “it’s as predicted in the BI-BULL.” Well, I’ll believe that when my raised beds are full of Heaven-sent frogs. Until then, I’m blaming us carbon belching apes for this changeable weather. So, back to Tuesday, when the temps were in the eighties, I figured we had one good day, possible two, to get the beds leveled and filled. So that’s what we did.

Marty making sure we had three-feet between the boxes. 

Leveling the boxes requires skill and patience, both of which I lack. After awhile, I just called it "good."

We are using Mel's recipe for our growing medium. Mel is Mel Bartholomew, the originator of square foot gardening. His recipe calls for 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 spagnum peat moss. While the Canadian peat moss people claim that they harvest their peat in a sustainable way, a better alternative, if you can find it,  is coir, a byproduct of coconut production. Note: Since we don't yet have compost from our composting operation, we had to purchase that. 

After mixing well, haul the mix over to the box and dump it in. We divided each box in half in terms of the amount of mix to combine as it's just too heavy and unwieldy if done all at once.

Then the bed is leveled out.

Gothic if not epic.

This angle gives a better view of the slope and the "level" boxes.