Soil Improvement Time!

I finally got the car onto the trailer to visit the local nursery a couple of days ago.  I wanted a LOT of good compost.  Around here, that is "Leaf Gro".  The nursery sells it in bulk with a front-loader into a trailer or pickup bed.  I got almost a cubic yard for $28.  That's about the same as $60 worth in bags at the big box store and I doubt their stuff is the same quality.

So I covered the trailer , drove it home and into the back yard, and uncovered it.  Lovely stuff (see yesterday's picture).  The first use was to add to the soil bulk in the small tomato bed against the house.

Here's the BEFORE picture.  Half-filled with soil (the old falling-down raingutters drained in there, washing soil out).   There were lots of grasses spreading by runners too.  I turned over all the soil with my leverage fork.  That's a really cool tool (more below). 

I filled it with 3 wheelbarrows of Leaf Gro and hardly made a dent in the trailer-load..    

Then I turned the soil deeply with the leverage fork to mix them.  It doesn't look as nice and dark on top, but the compost is now deep in the root zone where it should be.  I left space for 2" of bark mulch.  And I will say that the newly-sharpened shovel really went right down deep with little foot pressure.  And when hard clumps of old dirt came up, it easily cut through them.  Good tools are wonderful!

The red hose you see, BTW, normally sits on the top of the back board and runs along the fence all the way to the back yard where the rest of the veggie garden is.  It sure beats unlooping 100' of hose back near the house everytime I need to water the main garden.

The leverage fork is amazing.  You put a foot in the center and push down.  Then you push the handle back and down.  The horizontal bar provides bending leverage (hence the name) and this thing is solid steel providing great strength.  I use it to turn hard soil when a regular garden fork is too weak.  The only limitation is the depth.  It only goes down 8" because of the leverage bar.  But 8" is pretty good for most crops.  And if you use it to break up the hard soil BEFORE you add better soil, it is great too.

After using the leverage fork to break up the hard soil is when I added the Leaf Gro compost (a local product, I think) to the bed.  At that point, I could use the regular shovel to turn and mix the soil and chop up large dry chunks.  And pick out grass-runner roots.  

Since this bed is right up against the house, it is warmer there.  I'll plant some of the tomatoes there Monday and show the finished job then.  The weather forecast says the nightly lows will be above 50 after today for the rest of the season.

Tomatoes are actually tropical (sub-tropical?) vines and do NOT like temps below 50.  I've been using warming tricks for years, but this year I decided to just wait on the weather.  Between the serious amount of fresh compost and the delay in planting, and the additional sunlight from having a few trees removed, I am hoping for an outstanding tomato season (and other crops).