Fridays Are the Best!

Street cleaning comes by at 12:45pm every Friday, so I hussel to get my edge work done in time.  There's nothing like taking advantage of a city service!  I know I've talked a lot about edge work and you are probably thinking that I'm a little obsessed with a nice clean edge.  Well, I do like a clean edge, but I have yet to do any edging twice.  There's just soooo much to do.  Let's do the math, shall we?  The little sidewalk farm is 250 feet long on each side.  Since there is a sidewalk side and a curb side, that totals 1,000 linear feet of edge work!!  Here's a shot of what it looked like this morning and a shot of my buddy Gavin lending a hand.

 

Final product!

I've had more comments about my cinder block planter bed than I care to go into.  Most of them are negative.  I guess people like to complain.  One thing I did pay attention to was a comment that questioned the ability of the cinder blocks to hold dirt.  I stacked the blocks and am only using gravity at mortar.  The shear weight of the soil could push the blocks out into the sidewalk.  So, Hudson and I decided to reinforce it with re-bar and concrete!  It is amazing how cheap concrete is!  The local hardware store sold me 180lbs of dry mix for $9.  Granted it only did half the job and I have to go get more tomorrow, but I still think that's a great deal!

Once, my little helper and I ran out of quick-crete, we decided to tend to the compost.  I've instructed our gardeners to walk across the street and dump their lawn clippings in my 4ft x 4ft planter bed.  Hudson and I turn them into the soil every week.  Sorry, I forgot to snap an "AFTER" photo.  Oh, if you look closely, you can see a man in a white shirt walking across the street.  That's William!  He's the guy who saved our lemon tree!  Yeah William!

There's only one week left in February and frost isn't really ever an option, so we decided to start our tomatoes.  The garden supply store sells cardboard mini pots for starting seeds, but an egg carton seemed perfect to me.  Andrea and I even picked up a few restaurant sized egg cartons after a great breakfast at Amandine.