Rototiller Partay!

With the last frost estimated to be less than a month away (my elevation is 2000ft., and at zone 8a - or so they say) and with a brief break in the rainy weather, it was about time we got off our behinds and till! Aliyah and I got up at 6 in the morning to pick up our worker friends, Kacey and Robert, the rototiller, and oodles of coffee and doughnuts.

The space we chose to till amounted to a 50' by 30' foot area, estimating that we were tilling not only for the current year's crops but for next. Using the rototiller is extremely evasive to the natural micro-organisms living in the soil, and thus not something to do every year. Ideally, this garden will turn into a no-till garden that relies purely on green manure planted between the growing season, compost, and mulch from the nearby oak trees. But with our virgin clay loam sod being very compacted, the rototiller was a necessary evil to prepare the soil for gardening.

You'll also notice that there is white webbing fencing surrounding the plot. This is meant to act as the primary dear deterrent. It's actually electrified and made with an unit that had been laying around the old house for years. We'll see if it actually does the trick and keeps the dear away!

Oh, and we also added 5 cubic yards of mulch, courtesy of the county of El Dorado Fairgrounds, which was amended to the soil by hand to add nitrogen and balance the ph. This complicated the tilling process and made work a lot harder.

I wish we could've put the dogs to work! All they did was nap and occasionally beg us to throw sticks.