Soil Scientists: They Know All the Dirt

So last post we talked about (okay, I talked about; you readers don't really have much of a say in it, although there is always the Comments button should you have something pressing to say, such as, 'Jordan, enough with the garden already') building beds.

We (I) left off with four empty beds. The logical next step is to fill them in.

But with what?

Enter: The Great Soil Debacle of 2011. Actually, it was less a debacle and more a loaves-and-fish-multiplying sort of thing. It's a long story, but the Reader's Digest version is that it's hard to find soil in the big city, so Mike had to make an overnight trip and bring back all our soil the morning of the soil workshop. While there were a lot of logistical details that could have gone wrong, none did.

The trucker who drove Mike and our soil to Guayaquil could have slept through his alarm that morning, for instance.

The truck could have broken down on the highway and we would have had a soil-less soil workshop, for instance.

Mike could have been kidnapped by a band of rabid monkeys, for instance.

But, thankfully, none of those things happened, and that morning we found ourselves with a truck parked next to the Casita de Chocolate, about 30 large sacks of soil in the back of it, and a truck driver who refused to help us unload them, citing that his job was to drive the truck, not unload it.

One of the bicycle-cart men we had hired that morning agreed to help us unload. That went well for a while, until we got to the sacks of the really heavy type of soil. At that point, our bicycle-man walked out to the corner of the street, waved his arms, and shouted to everyone in the general vicinity that there was money to be made from unloading a truck.

Soon enough, we had some helping hands.

There were 3 or 4 different types of soil, and these hefty bags proved too much for us.

I think we may have caused these men serious back issues for the rest of their lives.

In the end, all the bags were unloaded, and nobody got hurt. We were left with lots of soil.

Lots and lots of soil. Too much soil. But we'll get to that later.

First, we have to use what soil we can to fill the beds we have:

Layer 1: Leaves.

Because we used leaves that were lying around, we didn't use so many leaves from the sacks we'd bought. This contributed to even more excess sackage!

Layer 2: Soil.

It took three grown men plus Übermensch Mike to lift just one of these bad boys.

Then they had to hobble across the garden and dump the bags in a bed to be opened and emptied out. At four bags per bed times four beds, this meant 16 trips with really heavy bags of soil.

At this point I decided to make myself useful by snapping pictures of other people working, and of napping babies:

Eventually enough bags of soil were heaved and ho'd into each of the beds, and again, miraculously, nobody was hurt in the process. After that it was just a matter of spreading the soil evenly and breaking up the larger lumps of clay.

Layer 3: Leaves, Redux.

Once the soil was in place, we topped off the beds with another layer of leaves. This time we used the finely chopped leaves we'd brought in.

And that's it. That's how you fill a bed with soil.

To recap:

Leaves on the bottom, then a layer of good soil (ideally a good balance of sandy and clay), then leaves on top. It's like a delicious soil sandwich for the plants, which are the next step.

But for now, let us take a step back and admire our handiwork:

(Notice all the extra bags; the soil aboundeth...)

And now would be the perfect time to utilize these beds for a nice nap, as they will never be as soft and dry as they are right now. Sleep tight! Over'n'out.