Raised from the Bed!

Have I mentioned that our community garden is in a graveyard? Yep. Let that sink in for a moment. Graveyard + gardening = haunted salad? According to the Quakers, this part of the graveyard was never used for its intended purpose, so why not grow some veggies on it? I was honestly a little bummed, the thought of growing tomatoes on top of old graves was oddly appealing. I mean, great fertilizer, right?



So this graveyard was really just a grassy field and the Quakers hired somebody to dig a whole bunch of it up. Bam. Garden plots. They took it upon themselves to get the soil tested and offered all the gardeners the results of said testing. The results read something like this "Soil is bahahh blaahh baditty blah, lacking (impossible to pronounce) nutrients, recommend gobbeldy-gook (or just giving up), etc" AKA, it was written up by astrophysicist argro-geniuses and not newbie gardeners. After some decoding I came to the conclusion that the soil sucked and would need a lot of supplementary nutrients added if we wanted anything more than dandelions to grow.

By the way - at this point I was feeling a little surprised. Who knew that soil quality was such a big deal? I mean, it's dirt. Stuff grows in dirt all over the world. I was a camp counselor for crying out loud! I know dirt. It's brown. When it gets wet it gets sticky and gloppy. It's hard to get out from under your fingernails. It's fun to play in. What else do you need to me know, for crying out loud?

But stuff like nitrogen and phosphorous are "important" according to real gardeners. Whatever. Screw all that sciency stuff. We decided to buy some soil and throw it into raised beds. More labor intensive, but less thinky. That's my kind of gardening.

So we did some very loose calculations about how much square yardage of soil we needed to purchase. This involved some graph paper, a bit of research, a few bottles of beer and plenty of good, old fashioned, winging it. We decided that 2 4x4 beds and 1 4x8 bed sounded good, cause why not? We'd see how it went. Woo! We're gardening!



So, around May 1 Chris and I went to Home Depot. Be advised - Home Depot on an early spring Saturday is TOTALLY INSANE. There were approximately 8 gajillion customers wandering around with giant empty flat bed carts and 3 people working there. One of those workers was sporting a peg leg and a neck brace. And he only spoke in sign language. It was a blast!

So we didn't really know what the hell we were up to, but I had made a list, so I was wandering confidently. I knew we could accomplish the Herculean task of getting everything on the list. Another lesson about Home Depot - this one is for the ladies. Wear pig tails. Or a skirt. Look confused. Approach the nearest Orange Apron and hand over your list. Proceed to let said Orange Apron gather everything you need, get it cut and then thank the Orange Apron. Never fails. Unless you get the guy with the peg leg. He's grouchy.

So we bought some lumber, some screws and some garden stakes. It only took 3 hours. Time to go to the garden and build some beds. Oh my. We had such high hopes! And such a flimsy grip on reality. Building stuff is harder than it looks.