Tomorrow I intend to finish preparing my garden for spring planting.
That will be a feat, especially if the handful of people who I've invited over to help decide not to show up. Over the winter, I managed to dig about 5 sq ft and have at least 15 more to go before I can get my salad fixin's sowed.
I have a couple of decent shovels and hoes. I have a trowel and a few rakes of varying stiffness. I've got manure and peat moss and humus. What I didn't have was a pick ax.
Gardening in Tennessee can be challenging. Our dirt is either rocky or clay with little top soil, or both. I am able to dig about 12" before hitting clay in the bed I've been working on for the past eight years, but anywhere else in the yard I'm lucky if I can dig 3" before hitting clay.
I'm a big fan of clay. It's great for pulling impurities from your pores, and it makes fabulous pottery. I just don't love it in my soil. In the past, I've even gone as far as adding sand to my dirt to aerate it. I've lugged leaves and grass clippings from all over town. I've even put coconut husks on it and tried to incorporate it into the soil.
There is very little organic matter I won't put onto my garden bed before planting. The problem comes when I want to work all that stuff into the clay. The stuff is just too dense to break up with a simple shovel. That's where the pick ax comes into play.
Thankfully, I knew just where to go to get one: my local hardware store. The best part of the purchase was when I pulled it out of the back of my car when I got home. Just at that moment, a neighborhood dad passed my house with his child in a stroller...while drinking a beer.
I guess we both had some fun today.
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