Henny Penny Farmette

The area for the garden must be tilled, amended, raked, and watered before planting

Moving wet and damp dirt is not easy. Worse, it’s dirty work. However, we are working a master plan for the landscape that includes a sitting area, a back yard in two levels, and an area that includes fruit trees, raised planting boxes for flowers, and a large vegetable garden.

The window of opportunity has opened for improving the soil before planting our summer garden. The soil is not too wet, nor too dry. Right now, this clay soil can be worked by hand and by machine.

My neighbor has already turned the earth in his garden several times. A couple of days ago, he pushed his rototiller through the gate dividing our respective properties and offered to till the soil in the area where I’m going to plant my summer garden.

The turning of the soil exposed not only a huge amount of rocks but also gravel. The previous owner of my property had at one time used the area for a gravel driveway. That meant compacted soil and lots of stone and broken pieces of granite and marble (the former owner was a building contractor), which I set about removing by the bucket. I recycled that rock onto a pathway in the garden.

Come summer, I know I’ll be glad I did all that dirty work, reintegrated the rock and gravel, and amended the soil. Good soil will grow just about anything you put into it. And I’ve already started dozens of open-pollinated vegetables in seed flats in my kitchen.