“Great day finding dirt!”
That made me chuckle. We are so amazingly BLESSED with Good Dirt it’s ridiculous! All you need is a skid steer with a scoop and a trip down to our lower pasture - which has been gathering ‘good virgin dirt’ due to erosion since Time Began. ;) (And before Modern Agricultural Practices to STOP erosion were put into place!)
Throw some ‘Ithaca Grow’ into the mix and you’re golden!
Yeah, it’s hilly. And yeah, after you’ve lived here for a while you WILL find one leg shorter than the other due to walking uphill - even when you’re walking downhill - but as far as dirt goes, it seems to be worth it. ;)
It’s 2:30 in the morning & I can’t sleep because I’m so excited about finding what appears to be ‘good dirt’!!
Back at the old home place, I had a dirt pile where I could get dirt for my raised beds. When dad had what became the ‘back field’ cleared for pasture, the bulldozer(s) scraped the tree debris into a brush pile - a lot of top soil got pushed into that pile as well. The top soil on that property is very dark, no clay until you get down a good foot or more. Once the tree debris got burned, the good soil was left. All of my beds were filled with that soil - most of it was dug by hand into a cart pulled by Little Buddy (the John Deere tractor style mower). A couple of times my brother helped me out with the tractor/scoop - a rare ‘treat’. I added compost every year (mostly Leaf Gro until it got too expensive) and that really helped the soil - when it was fresh from the dirt pile, it tended to compact when wet.
The plan for the metal beds against the barn ... there are 4 (I have 3, bro needs to dig up #4, too much for me) and I am going to put down shingles around the edges & between the beds (will be butted up against each other end-to-end) and then surround with landscape timbers on the 3 sides not up against the barn. When the beds got dug up, the bottoms were bent a little & the timbers will hide the bends plus give me something to weed eat/mow against. I am going to put down weed barrier first, then cardboard to smother the grass (cut really, really short) so I don’t have to spray grass killer.
The dirt I found is ‘river bottom’ so no clay & supposedly it drains well. It seems to be fairly fine, not screened, but not full of trash. It’s light/medium brown where dried & much darker when I dug through the top layer a bit. I think it’s going to be better than my dirt pile dirt at the old place! The garden center where it’s located is really nice - the lady I talked to there told me that folks from my town area come there for plants because there is “nothing” in my area. There IS a small market with quite a few flowers & local produce just down the road from the house, but nothing like a garden center. The Farm Bureau & Walmart have plants, but again, not the variety that a garden center would have.
Big downpour shortly after I got home yesterday and 60% chance of rain again today so work outside might be limited. The humidity has been horrible (and those stinkin’ gnats), unusually high for the mountains. Back in the good old days, before AC, the folks who could afford it would go to the mountains for the summer to avoid the low land heat/humidity.They would not have gotten much relief here this summer .... whew! The truck/trailer are going to get a workout (me too!) because I have to haul/shovel the raised bed dirt (probably 2 loads), mulch (at least 2 loads if I’m lucky, probably 3) and a load of gravel. I recently bought 2 dressy tops with short sleeves & I have to say, with all the shoveling and a tan (I have managed to avoid a ‘farmer’s tan’), my arms are looking pretty muscular, almost as good as the ‘barn biceps’ I had when I had 5 horses & was cleaning stalls, shoveling bedding & carrying hay bales :-)