Family Roots

We're digging a new garden!

I don't know exactly what this page is going to be, it is kind of a work in progress.  I'm trying to photo-document our first effort at gardening. So far it has been a whole lot of work, but fun all the while!

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to contact us.

Here you see our garden site (behind the truck).  To the left of the truck and garden are our apple trees, our house is behind the camera.

It's late in the day, and we're down to the "last mile".  It sure seemed to take as long as all the rest!

Dig Todd, Dig!

Dig Amy, Dig!

We brought in a dumptruck load (8 yards?) of topsoil.  It wasn't as clean as we had hoped, it took quite a bit of raking to get the sticks and stones out of it. Jessica didn't seem to mind too much, as she proclaimed (and I quote) "I'm on top of da world!"

Well at long last the base is finished, ready for topsoil fill to bring it back to surface level. I didn't take another picture yet, but we did put down about 4 inches of the rough topsoil to bring the base of the garden up to surface level, and as close to level as we can.  The weather station is calling for rain tonight, so I guess I'll see in the morning how far the garden sinks :)  We still have about half a dumptruck load of topsoil which we plan to sift all the stones, pebbles and sticks out of to mix with compost and fertilizer and spread about 3 or 4 inches thick for a seedbed on top of this base.

We've broken ground on our garden, a modest plot this first year, about 20 by 30 feet.  That is the measurement, but let me tell you when you have to move every square inch of sod by hand, and dig up and transport an equivelent amount of topsoil the same way, 20 by 30 feet is HUGE!

In the process of digging our new veggie garden just a few feet away from our apple trees we noticed the old age and relative lack of care they have recieved prior to our purchasing this piece of land.  To make a long story shorter we purchased a new young apple tree today and put it in the ground.  This took more than a little digging!  None the less our apple tree is in the gound with 80 pounds of composted cow manure.

Dig Todd, Dig!
 

The whole family got into the act, including my supervisor:

The supervisor insisted that she get to take a picture of our photographer and 2nd digger:
:

In the end, we did manage to get the tree in the ground, and took a moment to pause for the camera

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