Making a Garden

So I'm working on a garden. I finally got tired of the dirty, ignored, weed infested, spider filled situation happening outside the door of my guesthouse. I decided it was time to do something about it.

And since my mom is a landscape designer I figured I had a good chance of making something nice.

The whole garden is covered in this sand (like what you'd find in French jardins) so I knew I wanted to create a planting bed and not just a container garden. You know what that means, hard labor:

First my mom and I layed out the edge of the planting bed with the garden hose. Then I shoveled all of the sand out of that area. Then I had to cut away the protective layer between the dirt and the sand. Then, the good part, I turned the soil.


It all would have been really overwhelming and I considered hiring one of those guys outside of Home Depot to just do it all in an afternoon, but part of me wanted to be able to say I did it myself. So i set the timer for 15 minutes at a time and just did it. Over 4 days I got it done and it only took about an hour and a half total. The key is just doing that 15 minutes at a time.


Today I amended the soil so that it would be ready for planting later this week. My mom's go-to is worm castings (Worm Gold is the brand I used) which help to add minerals and fertilize the soil. I sprinkled that on the turned soil and then added a top layer of potting soil:


Also, this probably isn't a good idea, but I did all this work in my 'garden shoes'.


Next is picking the plants, which I'll be doing this tuesday. The area is small and mostly in the shade so I'm thinking chartreuse and green and easy to maintain. If I'm really ambitious I'll do a drip system and document that too!