Raising A Wet Garden... Weekend 1

 March 2011

Josh and I waited and waited for the rain to stop so we could start building our garden, then we remembered... we live in Oregon.  We really need to toughen up, so we went out in a light mist and started digging.  Since the rain is never ending we worked slowly. While it was easy to get our shovel in the ground (something in VA I was not used to) the soil was wet and heavy. Saturday amounted to about 8 hours of manual shoveling and the creation of a large mud pile in our parking strip. The soil was so wet we had to tarp the ground and place a tarp over the pile to keep it from running off... yay.  Also, I learned that good tarps are expensive like $60 a pop.

 

 

About half way through the day I began to realize how quickly you can get blisters and sore muscles.  I am clearly a big wuss.  Ditch digging is not for sissies and the repetitive motion is pretty mind numbing.   However, by the end of the day I had a pretty impressive mud hole to show for it. Cough.

 

On Sunday, with a whole new level of sore added to the equation I kept digging.  Josh started building the first two boxes.  The wood that we bought was fresh sawn so it was wet and heavy.  Most of the pieces were over 12' long so even getting them out of the garage to his impromtu back porch woodshop was difficult.  Honestly, there is not much to share on my end, I kept digging singing my own 'just keep digging, just keep digging' song in the rain to myself as neighbors passed by shaking their heads.

 

Josh had designed the beds to be self supporting he knotched each side so that the pieces interlocked and could stand together with only a few nails.  This was important because we didn't want to have to put posts in the corners.  While he worked away I leveled the ground with some sand and installed pavers at the four corners of each box to give us a level foundation. By 2:00pm he had built the first level of both boxes and we put them in place.  I then wrapped the interior of the boxes in plastic to protect the wood from moisture and slow down the rotting process. 

 

Josh came out and helped me in the next task, putting all the dirt we moved... back into the place it was before!  Lovely!  It was a long weekend without much to show for it.  However, the most important part was that we started the task. The week called for heavy rain (surprise) so we tarped everything we could, the ground, the boxes, the mud piles and packed it in for 5 days of rest.