Raised bed at the Aerie

I spent all day outside working to create one raised bed out of the hillside next to the stairs I carved into the slope. And I do mean all day. I started slightly after 8 AM when I finished my second cup of coffee and worked until just before 8 PM this evening. While the sun was warm (it reached 81° F just before 5 PM), there was a constant breeze blowing that kept things reasonable. Even so, I sweat like a stuck pig and took a fluid break every two hours; 20 oz. of Gatorade at 10 and 2, water at lunch and again at 4 in the afternoon. I had a beer with dinner at 5:30 and another liter of water at 8 PM when I quit for the day. Tylenol (extra strength) was also applied when I started, at lunch and again with dinner. When I finish loading this I believe I will take a wee dram of Glenlivet and then hit the showers and bed (with more Tylenol!).

This is what the area looked like yesterday before I laid a shovel and Johnson bar to it.



As you can see, there’s a considerable slope to the hill. I intended to cut into that slope and make two tiers each about 5 feet wide and 12-15 feet along the contour of the slope. Once I got into the task, however, two things became apparent: 1) If I built the second, higher tier, you couldn’t really harvest anything from it without leaning over and down the slope or stepping in the bed itself. Hat is not an ideal situation in that by leaning over you would have a tendency to fall down the hill and by stepping in the bed you would compact the soil and kill off the roots of the vegetables growing here. 2) It would be a bloody lot of work to construct and would take more stones than I have on hand.

Here’s the pile of rocks I hauled out of the woods yesterday and the day before using the hand truck and the wheelbarrow. It was actually easier to use the wheelbarrow because of the sides on the barrow. The stones could only be stacked one column and about 2 ½ feet high on the hand truck and, despite having two wheels, the hand truck was more difficult to move down the old logging road.
 


This is the pile of rocks I picked up last week on the second driveway up the hill. I hauled them out to the driveway and then took the Explorer up there to bring them down to the Aerie.



Here you can see the bed as it looked at noon. It is carved out of the hillside and is approximately 5 feet wide. (That’s the size of the rake.)



By dinner, I had sifted and screened nearly all the soil in the bed down to a depth of about 18 inches in the back and 2-3 inches in the front. The larger (bigger than a quarter) and rounder stones got discarded.



(Those are 6x6 timbers forming a rectangle approximately 2’ x 3’ and those stones all came from the screened soil of this one bed.)

Those that were really large or even just 9-10 inches across got set aside for use on the retaining wall. The small stones were saved to be used as a bed for the stone wall. And there were plenty of stones!

Just before quitting time.



My good friends the poor-man's backhoe (long-handled shovel and rake) and Johnson bar (the tall, skinny, black iron bar that weighs 16 pounds and has a chisel point on one end) which did the bulk of the work today breaking up and prying stones out of the clay soil.

I saved the first two wheelbarrows of screened dirt on a tarp and after that dumped the screened soil back into the trench as I worked. The trench is now full except for those two wheelbarrows of soil. They will go in after I build the wall to the finished height. That’s tomorrow’s job—along with mixing in some soil enhancers.

This is fill soil from the hillside, besides stones, it is almost exclusively clay. It needs organics in the worst way to improve its water holding capacity and aeration. To that end, I’ll be mixing in 6 bags of composted cow manure (with humus) and 3 cubic feet of peat moss. I’ll cover with mulch for the winter and it will be ready in the spring to plant some vegetables in this little stretch. Square foot gardening here we come!

If this project doesn't kill me, I'll be in great shape for the deer season!