I could have sold the soil to a gravel company. Its rocks and clay a foot deep and after that its sand. The sand is OK to dig through; the rocks and clay is the hard part. It takes a breaker bar.
I can't even find a picture of what I have to show. But imagine a 5' iron bar about 1.5" around with a chisel point. You lift it and pound it down into the hole and you loosen the rocks and soil. Then you use a post-hole-digger to grab the loosened soil and pull it out.
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The breaker bar weighes about 20 pounds. And you have to pound it down about 30 times per hole. Good exercise... But it DOES loosen rocks and hard soil.
I dug 6 of the required 9 holes today. I stopped when I sensed a blister coming... But tomorrow needs only 3 more holes.
The holes are to support PVC pipes that will form a grid to support 1" chicken wire to keep out the varmints. A lot of work, yeah. But when the squirrels and groundhogs are unstoppable otherwise and you want a garden, you do what you have to do.
And I'll certainly show the garden enclosure pictures as it is built!
But the main thing is that I did the really hard holes today. I think the best way to do any project is to do the hardest part first. It only gets easier after that. Besides, if the hard part is TOO hard and you have to give up, then you haven't wasted time on the easier parts that will be of no use.
The garden enclosure is surrounding 6 raised framed beds filled with 1/2 topsoil and 1/2 leaf compost. It's going to be a great new garden, replacing the poorer ones I built 25 years ago which finally rotted out.
The new ones are larger and deeper. And level!
2 comments:
Parece muito trabalho, mas no final vai valer o esforço para manter os pequenos intrusos afastados.
Boa sorte com os 3 últimos buracos.
Good on ya for tackling the hardest part first Mark. I TRY to make myself do this on projects - not often successfully! - mainly because I figure that if I knock over the bits that I'd prefer not to do first, then I can relax and the rest of the project will be fun. I hadn't thought about the investment not being wasted if the project was abandoned. That's helpful. Thank you.
Megan
Sydney, Australia
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