Wednesday, September 17, 2008

garden plan: next several weeks

I don't have anything against fir trees.  I grew up with douglas firs in the pacific northwest.  But this tree, right in the middle of the yard, is neither majestic nor beautiful.  It is awkward and ugly and big.  And it's coming down this weekend, thanks to Camie's cousin's boyfriend, Karson.  It will open up the backyard quite a bit, and good riddance to it.
So that is next on the list.  Once that's done, and we have another huge pile of branches, etc., it's time to rent the limb chipper.  I'm not real thrilled, because it's going to cost probably about $150, but since we're getting the tree cut down for free, I guess it will even things out.

The limb chipper is also going to take care of this pile, which has grown to about 3 times this size since I took this picture:
This process will create a huge pile of mulch ready for composting.  Next week, my plan is to get a couple truck loads of manure, combine it with the mulch, and let nature do its thing.  Hopefully in about a month I'll have a nice compost pile that will feed my garden soil next year.

Also in the next few weeks, it's time to lay out the planting beds and work in some manure to sit over the winter and slowly decompose.  I'm delaying this, though, until the current crops have run their course.  I'm in a bit of a time crunch, too, since the garlic seeds have arrived and need to be planted.  I'd like to have some compost to use by then, too, but I'm not sure exactly how long the compost pile will take to decompose.  So we'll just proceed one step at a time and see how it goes.

1 comment:

camie said...

i feel like a bit of a tree killer, and i still don't like the idea of karson climbing up that stupid thing...