Garden Expansion Project - Part 2

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Today is the kind of day every gardener dreams of.  There was a clear blue sky and just a slight breeze.  It was sunny and about 65 to 70 degrees.  The perfect day to finish up my garden expansion project.  I went to Home Depot this morning and rented a mid size rear tine tiller.  I wasn't sure how long it would take me to till up the 400 square foot area.  I rented it for four hours, and that was a smart move.  The dirt up there is pretty decent compared to the Georgia clay in most of my yard.

After getting my neighbor to help me unload the tiller and get it in position, I was done in less than an hour.  I tilled the area for another hour until everything was tilled nicely.  Baby powder consistency, oh yeah!  I hit a few roots from the tree I dug up, but nothing major.  I was pretty surprised how easy it was.  I raked everything smooth and now I am ready to get some corn and peas in the ground. 

Here is the beast, cost me about 45 bucks for 4 hours.

Here is the area after the initial tilling of one hour.

This was a nice cinder block and concrete footer that came from something.  The tiller practically jumped out of my hands when it hit this.

Here are the roots I found that I missed when I dug out the tree stump.  There weren't that many.

Here is the area after tilling for another hour, it was perfect.

Here is the area after I raked it smooth.

Update on Seedlings - March 7th

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It has been three weeks since I started my own seeds.  Everything seems to be working the way it should be.  I find myself saying just one more tomato should be ok to up pot, just one more jalapeno plant, a few more eggplants.  It is just so hard to throw them away once you see them germinate.

So far I have moved to bigger card board pots the following:
3 Roma Tomatoes
3 Better Boy Tomatoes
3 Best Boy Tomatoes
4 Habanero Peppers
5 Jalapeno Peppers
2 Bell Peppers
3 Eggplants

The more I keep, the more I am struggling on where I will find space in the garden for it all.  My corn and peas take up a lot of space as it is.  I may end up growing some in containers, maybe my coca cola cooler can become a jalapeno and habanero coca cola cooler.

Here are the majority of the little guys

Garden Expansion Project - Part 1

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The expansion of my upper gardening area has been a gradual work in process for the past nine months.  This area will give me 16 x 25 feet of gardening area for a total of 400 sq feet.  I will mostly plant field peas and corn up here.

In May of last year I cut down a 25 to 30 ft October Glory red maple tree that was shading the area, details here.  Then in January of this year, I removed the stump and most of the roots that were left, details here and here.

So here we are in March, and just a few weeks before I can start planting some of my favorites.  So today after church I had to get it in gear to finish my expansion.  All that is left to do is to till the entire area and put a border around it using bricks.  I got the border done in a few hours and tried to get everything as clean as I could.  I am going to rent a tiller next week and till the entire area. 

This is the existing area and you can see the four foot strip that I was using outlined by bricks.  Weeds were bad in a few spots.

First thing I did was measure down 16 feet from the fence line at both ends and drove a metal garden stake in the ground.  I tied a string to each stake to give me a straight line to lay my bricks.  I raked the area to get it as smooth as I could.  I am not going for perfection here, and I just dry laid the bricks to segregate the area that I will be gardening in.

This was how it looked after the first row of bricks were laid.  Looks straight enough for me.

This was after the second row of bricks.  Now all that is left is to till everything up.