Soon to be Fruits of My Labor

Here is the new vegetable bed. Two days worth of hard labor (at least for a 56 year old chubby like me) and everything is in the ground and ready to start making me some homegrown tomatoes and peppers. Just about finished...all that needs doing is the mulch but I ran out of spit. Hauling in a little over 100 cubic feet of topsoil(1 cubic foot bag at a time) was a chore not to mention four trips to Home Despot. Load the bags on the gurney(24 each trip), roll them to the truck, load the truck, unload the truck at home and then dump each bag into the bed. Throw in 10 cubic feet of composted manure and 5 cubic feet of perlite and you are then officially "cream-crackered" as my English friend says.

I know that sounds expensive and it was, as the total project came in at 320 bucks plants included. If you have ever tried to grow anything in Georgia red clay then you know why I went to the trouble and expense. I could have filled the bed with a couple of dozen garden cart loads of garden soil from the back of the lot but I figured I would do it right instead of cheap. Besides I wasn't too keen on carting all that soil up the hill from the garden. Starting clean with no weed seeds, no cutworms, no nematodes etc. and it will be used for a few years at least. As madam cracked this morning, "Those better be some pretty good tomatoes for that price."

Now begins the patient wait. Just so you'll know( I will post pictures as things proceed.) in the front are 4 Rutgers, on the right are 2 Granny Cantrell followed by a Pruden's Purple. In the center behind the Rutgers are 2 Brandywine and another Pruden's. Down the left side are 2 Nardello sweet pepper and 2 Garden Surprise (green) peppers and then 2 Relleno peppers. In the back is one heirloom Italian eggplant. I also scattered in some Sweet Basil and Italian Parsley.