The weather (and our schedules!) cooperated and we filled our garden beds yesterday!

First though, we finished putting the supports in the middle of the beds,

then spent a bit of time discussing if we wanted to put sticks in the bottom of the beds for fill. We ultimately decided not to – we didn’t want to introduce anything foreign that might grow in there. And, we ordered 3 yards of soil – surely that was enough? (spoiler: it was not; but more on that below.)

We added peat moss to our soil mix,

then used the skid steer loader to mix it up in the driveway.

While Steven was doing that, I put down the plywood for him to drive over to take the soil mix to the beds.

He’d load up a scoop, I’d push it back into the bucket a bit, then he’d drive over to the beds and dump it. I’d smooth it out a bit, then we went back and forth with that about eight times.

Then discovered we did not have enough soil. Even though we ordered 3 yards (and needed something like 3.08).

Luckily, the supply place is only a couple miles from the house, open on Saturday, and, most importantly!, willing to deliver on Saturday so we could keep going.

This time we ordered 2 yards to be on the safe side, and the 2 yards looked like as much as we got when we ordered 3. Huh. Ha. So we had A LOT extra.

We mixed the peat moss in again, and continued filling the beds. Tywin came and helped!

I think it’s good we got a new load of soil for the tops – we were at the bottom of the previous load and it was all wet and caked together from the rain. The new soil was nice and loose!

Tada!

We used the extra soil to level out some parts of the front yard.

And we cleaned up after that – put all the tools away, put the plywood away, but the skid steer loader away, pulled the tarp the soil was on out to dry. All in all, we spent about five and a half hours working on it yesterday!

The next step is to bring the plants we’ve been growing in the basement out into the elements a bit to get used to it before they are planted (in about two weeks – we’ll sow the rest of the seeds in two weeks too).