New Garden - Phase 1

As you can see I have now finished and planted 5 of the new raised beds. Broccoli, cabbage, spinach, sugar snap peas, and roquette(arugula). I have a little space left to get some radishes, turnips and carrots planted which I should be able to get to next week.  I consider these first 5 beds phase one. They are in the area that gets the first morning sun. I've still got to remove tomatoes and peppers and dig sweet potatoes before I can move on and move on I will. Still left in this phase is to fill the area between the beds with wood chips and do some water control but it is effectively finished.

Some of you might be thinking that for something I have been working on for weeks it doesn't look like much. There are 22 blocks per bed for a total of 110 blocks and each one was hand placed and leveled and the beds are square to within an inch. Each bed is roughly 10 feet by 4 feet or 40 sq ft. I calculate that each bed holds approximately 26 cubic feet of dirt and that dirt weight about 45 pounds per cubic foot. Each bed holds around 1,100 pounds of dirt and that means I have moved a lot of dirt to fill them all. My goal is to have 20 beds by next spring so I've got 330 more blocks to place and another 8 or so tons of dirt to move. It costs me about 50 bucks per bed with the block and the soil amendments so I also have to pace myself for budgetary reasons.

Of to work in a bit. Pulled the closing shift today but it is supposed be at the "Pro" register and that is usually pretty quiet on a Friday night. I hope everyone's Friday the 13th is going swimmingly. Since it is Friday the 13th I made a special effort today to go buy a lottery ticket for the Mega Millions drawing tonight.