Katie and I are getting (more) serious about our backyard garden this year. To help keep the plants watered, we installed a drip irrigation system last weekend. Today I pruned the berry bushes and grapevines, which hopefully will produce some fruit this year, and we are growing heirloom vegetable and herb seedlings inside under a light.
Seedlings
Pantano Romanesco and Principe Borghese Heirloom Tomatoes
the yard looks great…you guys have so much going on. very cool!
Any chance you got your garden soil from an outside source?
Adam, what do you mean?
Sorry. Did you purchase any garden soil from a garden supply center or are you just using native soil from your backyard? We’re looking to build a couple raised garden beds and looking for some dirt on dirt. We’ll need about 2.3 cu. yd.
Adam! No problem my friend. We have just been using our own soil for the past year, BUT we originally added some compost, dirt, sand, etc. from Home Depot and our own pile. A friend of mine just had 1.5 cubic yards or so dumped on his driveway–email me if you want to know who he uses for such things.
It is a good idea to add extra dirt (that is not so clay-ey as ours is here in Austin) and organic matter like compost for better soil and drainage, so you are definitely on the right track.
This year we also went to Countryside nursery on Pond Springs road and bought gypsum (which helps our alkaline soil), greensand, and kelp (which provides all the trace minerals needed for the garden). You could probably skip all of those until you get your main soil set up in the raised beds, but it is something to consider in the future.
We tried adding a few inches of compost to our backyard soil last year but the drainage still wasn’t enough and we constantly ran up against the fungal problem. We need more depth of good soil so raised beds appear to be the answer.