Double-Digging & Laying in Compost

We pulled up all the remaining garden veggies and turned the topsoil a few weeks ago, but I also wanted to lay in a layer of compost and leaves deep in the garden bed, which we finally did this past Sunday. Hit a few slabs of concrete about a foot and a half down. My husband said they are from an old barbecue pit.


My sons Scott & Todd having lots of fun digging and digging. They were mad at first at having to help, but once we started finding rocks and concrete they got excited and proclaimed it an archeological dig, LOL.


Another slab of concrete we had to dig out:


There were injuries! In trying to team-lift one of the concrete slabs Scott's fingers got pinned for a brief moment. It just broke the skin on one finger but it was scary for a minute and even bruised his nail beds. We were out of band-aids so we made one with toilet paper and tape. After he got patched up he said, I'm ready to get back to work!


A trench with a layer of compost on the bottom then getting covered in leaves.


I started by digging an entire trench and shoveling the dirt into a garbage can and then laying the compost, then laying the leaves, then covering the whole thing up with the dirt from the can. By the second trench I was through. So I then just dug a square about 2 feet across, then laid in compost, then covered in leaves, then dirt. Here is one such square.


About a quarter way through, whew! Brian came out and helped, thank goodness.


All done, I am so happy that my garden bed is all tucked in for the winter. In the spring I will do it all again with another layer of compost, and go over it with a roto-tiller before planting. I think we will have a very nice harvest next year!

Cantaloupe, Melon, Okra, Grapes & More

These are some garden pics from last summer I didn't post. Click to see big, Enjoy!

The first of the cantaloupe to ripen. Though none were bigger than this they were all very sweet!


I didn't break up the ground far down enough so I ended up with lots of short carrots. Quite a few were real thick though and we had carrots until the very end of October.


My fireball tomato plants, these things were my best producers of everything I planted. I would pick them daily and every day I had a bunch more ripened. These grew non-stop and were quite tasty!


I did not plant these so this was a super nice bonus and surprise. My husband kept saying we had concord grapes somewhere; he remembered them from when he was a little boy (the house we live in has been in his family for generations) but his grandmother said they had cut the grape vines down about 15 years ago as they were damaging a nearby tree. This summer the vines put out and we had about 10 bunches or so. They were perfect...just divine.


Patch of honeydew melons, you can see one but the rest are covered. We only ended up with 5 big-ish ones. The plants put out quite a lot of baby ones but most broke off. The ones that grew big were nice and thick and sweet though.


A few veggies I tried to grow indoors. In the blue bag is broccoli, which grew but never flowered, right next to it in the small brown pot is basil, and right behind it are green beans which grew ok indoors. I didn't get a lot of beans from them though, maybe 10 or so. In the white bag over to the right (your right) was collard greens, which grew ok, and behind that was a small pot of parsley which thrived and is still thriving. The rest of the plants are not veggies, just various houseplants.


A row of okra next to a row of corn I planted from popcorn seeds. These corn plants were more prolific than the sweet golden corn I planted earlier in the season. They ended up producing 4-5 ears of corn per plant while the other corn produced 1-2 ears per plant. But they were tougher and didn't taste nearly as good. Guess that's why it's popcorn ha ha.


My son Todd pointing at the lettuce. We picked at these plants almost every day for salads so none of our lettuce heads got very big. Great lettuce!


Some fireball tomato plants I grew indoors.


Squash, beets, and turnips. I had a bunch of all of these, especially turnips. My squash plants went bad after the first picking though (they got a mold from the cucumber plants).