Top soil

I love our property. It’s wonderful. Full of trees, streams, and gently folded hills. What it is not is soil rich. Lots of older trees means loam in the forest. But there is no depth to it. We can’t dig it up and use it elsewhere on the property. So we buy dirt. Lots and lots of dirt.

20 yards, baby!

This makes the third year that we’ve brought in loads of top soil. Usually we just do 10 yards but this year we got the full truckload of 20. 

We used it to fill in the kitchen garden.

My new rock-walled kitchen garden

I added some mini rock walls to the front flower beds. This helped smooth the curves to make it easier for Chris to mow. Of course those needed to be filled and the flower bed itself was too low. So more soil was added there.

Bed #1

Bed #2, already planted pansies

Bed #3, maybe for bachelor buttons?

I had planned to hit the nursery this year for a bunch of perennial plants to would fill these beds with recurring color. They’re already pretty full of hostas but I’d like some color in there too. But the nursery I like is closed for COVID reasons and I’ll just have to wait. I’ve got some annual flower seeds so at least I’ll be able to get those in there.

The rest of the soil will be used on various gardens and to level the yard around the greenhouse. Anything left over will get spread in the chicken pasture in hopes of renewing that area. I’ve already spread it with mulching hay and the leaves I raked up while cleaning up the yard this spring. If I get soil in there too I should be able to get grass to regrow.