First Beds

Our new house was surrounded by pasture, pasture that had been mowed and mowed and mowed. Underneath the over-mowed pasture was sandy sand. Our native soil can't hold water, can barely support grasses and pasture weeds, and is full of rocks. Luckily, most of the rocks are friendly, being smallish and round; leaden ping pong balls, snuggled into their bed of sandy sand.

Not much can grow in this native soil.

25 yards makes a huge pile.

There's a roadside sign along the highway as you drive onto our island. "Garden compost, $15/yard." Feeling adventuresome, we called the number, and sure enough, our local dairy farmer would bring his dump truck to our property, filled to the brim with 25 yards of dairy compost.

There was hope.

Lovely, lovely straw, ready to become soil.

Another local source delivered 20 bales of straw. We had the makings of healthy soil that would feed the microbes and worms and an entire universe of burrowing beings. We rolled up our sleeves.

This bounty arrived mid-summer. We had visions of a fall garden, burgeoning with cabbages and squash and onions. We were ready.

However, the dairy compost was hot. The high nitrogen would cook any tender seedlings we handed over to its care.

Undeterred, we refocused our lens and looked toward spring. We pried apart pads of compacted straw from each bale, nestled them cheek-by-jowl onto our newly mown pasture, creating ten beds, 4 feet wide and 45 feet long, with a wide central walkway.

The planting beds take shape.

Ten beds, leaving room for a greenhouse.

We carted our hot compost and piled it, 6 inches deep, onto the 5 inches of straw pads, and watered it all down.

Our hopeful scheme for keeping the landscape cloth in place.

To deter fall weed seeds from setting up house on these inviting stretches of richness, we covered each bed with landscape cloth, holding the edges down with burlap bags.
It looked a mess, but we knew that each bed would cook over the winter and be ready for spring planting in just a few months.

In the meantime, we needed worms.

Build it, and they will come.

They did. In droves.

The first watering.