A few months ago our friends the Mullens and Dan moved into this recently renovated house. It was one of the first houses in the area built back in 1918. Because of the poor quality of San Diego soil, the homeowner (might as well say homesteader) carted in good soil and soil amendments from elsewhere in order to be able to garden. 100 years and a hoarder/junker previous tenant later and the soil is back to being hard compacted silt sand and clay…with some glass shards, nails, and ample helpings of rocks thrown in for good measure.
After the first pass to remove the weeds.
Starting to smell like a feed lot.
Our first consideration was soil quality. Good soil = Good veggies. Soil is traditionally amended through the addition of compost, manure, and or fertilizer in some combination. We decided to go with (at the advise of our wise sage…a friend’s gardener-father) a good (but cheap) composted manure from Home Depot for a buck 27 a bag. We bought 32 bags. That’s a lot of bull @#%^ (sorry i had to). At 35 lbs a bag that works out to around half ton of manure…we drove the truck with windows down on the way home…maybe a bad idea. In addition we added one bag of balanced fertilizer.
Just draggin some cow poop around.
The second consideration was how to get the chosen amendments into the soil. One way, the slow way, is to double dig. I love wielding a shovel for hours and hours as much as the next guy but…anywho. Our chosen method was a 5.5HP Honda Rear-Tine tiller. SCIENCE! TECHNOLOGY! MODERN MECHANIZATION! THE FUTURE! This saved us time but still took us 4 hours and 4 passes of the garden bed to thoroughly break the soil and mix in the manure and fertilizer. This was one of the hardest work afternoons I’ve ever had. My friend Beau literally rode the on top of the tiller trying to get it to bite into rock hard earth. We all came away with blisters and sunburns. We also had the help of my Marine friend Nick (recently returned from Afghanistan) who came down from 29 Palms to hang. He brought the strength and the AMERICA!
Tilling is a mix between steer wrestling and walking.
In all there were about 5 or 6 of us who handled the tilling. It was awesome to come together and work really hard to get our garden bed prepped for planting. Felt great. There’s not much in life similar to that wonderful tired feeling after working hard at something you love.
We celebrated with some beers and a sit in the shade…felt as good a grace as any.
Lady E with a fresh lemon.
30x17 