Monday, November 5, 2012

The start of a plague

I received a single black berry transplant from Nate (Sarah's bro-in-law). Anyways it's great he was able to give me one. This little guy should take off quite rapidly and hopefully taking over much of the side of the garage. The concern of lead entering the fruit is minimal based on my research. It seems that fruiting bushes and trees do not deposit lead and other heavy metals in to the fruit. This is why I chose to plant this guy directly in the existing soil. The rose plant I moved from the front yard has done great back here. Hopefully the two can be frenemies.

So much dirt!!

Here's what my car looked like with all of the soil in it. I was without a doubt riding on the axle. I was halfway through loading the car and was wondering why I hadn't rented the Menard's truck. Oh well, the car survived and just needed a good vacuuming.



In total there were:

  • 7 bags of vermiculite (3.3 cu ft)
  • 11 bags of Peat Moss (2.2 cu ft)
  • 5 bags of New Plant Life mushroom compost (New Plant Life, 0.75 cu ft)
  • 2 bags of New Plant Life composted manure (New Plant Life, 0.75 cu ft)
  • 4 bags of Dr. Earth's Natural Choice All Purpose Compost (All Purpose Compost, 1.5 cu ft)
  • 4 bags of a composted cow manure that I'll need to find the name of, 1.5 cu ft
  • 6 bags of Back to Nature: Nature's Blend which is a mix of cotton burr, manure, humate, and alfalfa, 1.0 cu ft
Here's it stacked:


All in all the biggest pain was mixing the soil. SO MUCH WORK. Oh well I did the tarp method but modified it with keeping the tarp in the bed so I could just shovel/slide the soil out. Once I had enough soil mounded on the one side I could removed the tarp completely and just spread out the soil. Here's what the finished product looks like: