Dirt

Digging and mulching new garden beds continues intermittently, when the weather and the babies’ naps manage to coincide perfectly. It’s addicting. It’s childhood fantasies of digging at will brought to life. It’s my yard and I can dig where I want to! I’ve started a diamond-shaped bed for the corn, with a secret room in the middle.

Since we moved in I have bemoaned the poor quality of my dirt: bare, lifeless clay that turns into bricks when dry and glue when wet. I just realized that I was just looking in the wrong spots–areas that were next to buildings or the driveway or right under the trees. Of course the areas that were bare dirt weren’t very fertile!

Digging out where the grass has been growing for years, I realize that most of my dirt looks like decent loam with plenty of organic matter. Even when dry, it’s easy to dig (unlike the flowerbed soil I was trying to work with before). It’s not super dark or rich, but it ought to grow well. (As Food not Lawns says, any ground that grows a good lawn should grow food just fine.)

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