Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Wow! That's deep! You're going to grow some incredible veggies in there. Congratulations!

So, you're going to have a big dump truck full of dirt delivered, right? I hope you're not going to try to fill that spot bag by bag from Lowe's...from the photos it looks like you'll need a LOT of soil.

Oh, and by the way...nice work on the wall! It looks so perfectly level. One of my pet peeves in my neighborhood is seeing concrete block garden walls that are installed by homeowners who clearly don't know or care how to do it right. Yours, on the other hand, looks very professional!

hey thanks! we started leveling out the dirt yesterday and it's filling in decently, might not be enough though. there is also a bunch of dirt under the deck that we'll transfer over as well. there's a 0% chance of getting a dump truck to deliver dirt, just sounds expensive.

our backup plan if we don't have enough dirt is to just to take one layer off the top and we could certainly use those to make a circle around the tree in the front, that would look pretty nice.

the wall is as level as i could possibly make it. the difference between one end to the other is 2 inches. you can't really tell, but it's slightly not level. the reason for that is the massive tree in the garden. There were TONS of roots around the garden and i did not want to cut those, so there are parts i fudged a little for the sake of the tree. i had to cut a few roots, but i could have done much more damage than i actually did. so the fact that it's not perfectly level is the trees fault.

I thought you might say that about the dirt delivery! We have had bulk materials delivered to us twice -- I think once for pea gravel and sand and once for mulch. The delivery charge was around $40 each time I think, but the materials were dirt cheap (ha ha ha). I think your garden will do awesome if you leave the top row on the wall and use deeper garden soil. It's more of an investment, but your plants will probably grow a lot better with deeper good soil and great drainage. And, as the soil compacts over this coming season, you'll probably need to add a little more next year, or at least lots of compost.

There is a calculator linked below to see how much dirt you actually need to fill the space in case you run short, which might help you figure it all out.

http://www.pioneersand.com/landscape-material-calculator.htm

ok, well after talking to Liz this morning and hearing your comments on it, i'd say there is now about a 40% chance we get dirt delivered =P. $40 is not as expensive as i thought it might be, and you're right, it would be dirt cheap. we aren't too terribly concerned about price, so far the whole project has cost $160 when you include the gift cards we've used. In the grand scheme of things, this project will not break the bank by any means.

here was our plan, but to be honest, Liz is the master of the project, I just talk/blog/comment way too much. .

we were going to build the dirt up to 6-8 inches under the top of the garden bed. If we had enough regular dirt from the yard to do that, then great. if we didn't then we might reduce it by one level. then we were going to get bags of garden soil from Lowe's to fill in that 6-8 inches around the entire garden. that way there was a large amount of good soil for the plants to use before hitting the crappy dirt from our yard.

id say after hearing that you don't think we should reduce it one level, on top of our opinions that it looks so good raised up so high, we probably won't be lowering it then. if we dont have enough dirt to fill in according to our plan, what do you think we should do? just get all garden soil delivered to fill in whatever we have?

I know, the thought of having a dumptruck come to your house sounds really expensive. Call your local landscape or hardscape place to get an accurate price from them (and sometimes it is cheaper if you have a neighbor working on a project and the truck can deliver to two houses at once, so if anyone around you is working on something, try to split a truck -- hardscape places have trucks that can bring two different kinds of material in one delivery).

Once you know how much you need, price the difference between the number of bags you'd have to buy at Lowe's and the cost of having it delivered in bulk. If you end up not needing much, buying it by the bag might be cheaper.

I would fill the bed in as much as you can with what you already have available to you in your yard and then measure to see how much space you have left to the top of the wall. Eight inches of garden soil is probably deep enough and if you have a few inches more than that, all the better. If you end up with a foot and a half that you need to fill in, talk to the guys at the hardscape place or at the nursery or wherever you'd get your dirt and see what they think. It might be cheaper to use fill dirt for the bottom couple of inches and then use garden soil for the top eight to ten inches, or it might not make much of a difference in price.

I do think the wall looks great as high as it is. One other thought -- you might want to put down some kind of water barrier or drainage protection between your fence and the dirt so that your fence doesn't rot. Maybe a plastic sheet or gravel or who knows what? Another good question for the nursery/hardscape people. A couple of inches of dirt against the fence probably won't hurt anything, but more than that might possibly cause a problem.

This is totally not my area of expertise and I'm sure someone else could comment with much more wisdom than I have. I have a little experience just from our yard and the one thing I've learned is that a veggie garden needs good soil to do well, so that is what I'm thinking of as your top priority.

So far, the garden looks great!! Don't forget about fertilizer. Hope you get lots of carrots and green beans! Yummy

it'd be awesome if we had a good relationship with our neighbors, but unfortunately, not a lot of them care about their yards. and of the one guy i talk to, i know he's not doing anything like that right now.

we'll be looking into some garden centers this week or weekend sometime definitely.

as for the barrier, we plan to put nail some boards into the posts on this side of the fence to add some protection for the fence, so really we just need the posts to hold up, and im pretty sure they are strong enough to support it. we've gone back and forth on treated vs. non-treated wood and i think ive decided to get treated wood and then install some non-porous landscaping fabric to prevent any chemicals from getting in the soil. ive heard horror stories about untreated wood rotting within 3 months and i DO NOT want to have to deal with that. I'd much rather get the treated and know the garden will hold up for a long time. According to some research ive done, treated wood sold after 2003 or so is not as chemically dangerous as previous types. i think we'll be fine with some landscaping fabric protecting the soil.

Hillary, you may not call yourself an expert, but you certainly have opinions and we love hearing them. And if nothing else, you know the most about gardening of all the people we know, so the more opinions and information from you the better!

I've heard that the Dickman family is CRAZY for green beans!

I think your solution to avoid rotting the fence sounds great!

One other thought -- you should check with some local farms or farmers at the farmer's market to see if they have rotted manure for free for you to pick up. We use free well-rotted horse manure from a farm near us for fertilizer in our garden. And compost from our pile.