First Planting: Part 2

Got my photos today! Much better pictures of our first planting!

Here's the fraternity volunteers who built 2/3rds of our raised-bed garden and helped us do our first planting, with Shelby on the far right:

The stars of the show:



Here's another guy taking pictures.



Later we'll get a copy of his photos of the three residents who worked on the garden: Jean, David, and me. The rest of my photos are all of the garden:

From the bottom:


Off to the right, toward the railyard:


Off to the left, toward the bus stop:


Close-up of part of the herb bed: peppermint, golden sage, peony (really petunia) and marigolds:

It's On!

Some volunteers from a local fraternity built a raised-bed garden on a bit of scavenged land behind our building, the Union Hotel. It's about 75 square feet, in an irregular semi-triangle. I've started this blog to record our garden experience.

I'll be taking phographs as we go along. For a beginning, here's where we are on Google Earth.

So far, the volunteers and our Maintenance Marvel Man Ed have sifted out a lot of rocks and laid down some top soil. There's a good foot of good-textured soil, sandy loam, with a denser soild, more clay and rock, under it. I've tested the soil, and it seems to be around ph 7.0, with a moderate amount of phosphorus but a very low amount of nitrogen and potassium. The volunteers have donated about 40 pounds of steer manure, and we're collecting coffee ground, veggie and fruit peelings, and eggshells; adding all of that should help both the soil texture and the nitrogen content.

We'll start planting April 28 this year, but much earlier next year.