Neighborhood gardens

Once our grow box was completed. (see below) I needed to find some good garden dirt. This proved to be quite the event. It was cheaper to buy a truck load, about 11 cubic yards. This mix had, steer manure, Pete moss, a little sand and some other compost thrown in. It was the most beautiful dirt! I called around to my neighbors to see if anyone needed any. Turns out two of them did. The Whitney's needed a few cubic yards and the Southwicks decided they wanted to put in a garden. So I'll give you the play by play for our Saturday activity. It was seriously crazy fun! We had the dump truck dump 3/4 of the dirt on my driveway. The driver asked if I wanted to move my cars out of the garage. I said no because I planned on having all the dirt moved by the end of the day. Little did I know what an awesome adventure this would be!

First on the agenda, get our new garden box filled. (3' X 16' X 2 railroad ties high)

While the kids, myself and my neighbor friend, Amber, shoveled dirt, Ter borrowed a tiller and tilled the back garden bed.

Once completed, we headed three doors down to the Whitneys. Their garden bed was already in place but it needed about 10" of dirt brought in. Ter made a ramp out of 2X4's so we could get the wheel barrow up into the bed.

Then Ter tilled everything together. Their garden bed is about 4' X 45'-50' give or take a few feet.

Next place? Across the street to the Southwicks. They have a very small back yard, but it gets great sun light one one section. So we helped them build their garden bed. It turned out to be 4' X 20' X 3 railroad ties high.

So here's the pile of dirt on my driveway. See the white truck in the background? That's where the dirt had to go. So we had a relay chain of wheel barrows going between the two houses.

The guys would fill up with dirt, head over to the Southwicks....

where Amber and I would take rakes and push the dirt into all the corners and get it level. Any kid outside wanting to play were recruited to help with the project.

We finished just as the sun was setting. Doesn't it look great!

And yes, we got all the dirt moved so we could get our cars out of the garage.

This was such an amazing day! We've lived by our neighbors for 6 years and we've never done anything like this before. The kids said they actually had fun working side by side with the other neighbor kids.

I seriously feel this is how a neighborhood should function. If someone has a project, we jump in and lend a hand. I'm very excited to have more gardens in the neighborhood.