garden ready

i got the boxes all assembled the other day and ethan and i were just waiting on a day off together when we could tackle changing everything over.  (click on any image to enlarge)

inside the boxes i added drainage holes covered with metal screen so the plants won't sit in water and all the dirt doesn't fall out the bottom.  the first layer in the planter boxes is a layer of rocks and gravel.  we salvaged all the rocky dirt from the bottom of the old box and laid that down.

we started off with just the right section.  we unloaded all the dirt and dumped it on a plastic drop cloth, cut the old section away, and got the new box up.

one of the ways that we use our outdoor area is by composting all of our food scraps--vegetables, egg shells, coffee grounds, etc..  we have 4 plastic garbage bins on the patio that are all in different stages of decomposition so whenever we need some good dirt for the garden it's there and ready.  the middle pic is of the awesome worms that live in there!  because our garden is in raised planter boxes and not in the ground our ph levels are crazy.  we've been dealing with this for several years with different stages of success, but liming the soil definitely helps.  adding this to the soil has helped our blossom end rot a lot.

here we are further along.  we've got all the dirt on the ground and ethan's adding some compost to the boxes.  george is supervising.  you can see the carnage that was the old box in the lower right corner.  as we were taking it apart it was crumbling in our hands.

bam!  look at those beautiful boxes all prepped and ready for this year's garden!

and through the magic of photoshop we can see what they'll look like in a couple of months!  the top half of this pic was taken in early summer of last year.  by the time fall had come around our tomato plants were taller than the fence!