Soil

When doing the whole Sustainable Urban Garden thing, I thought I had better put some thought into the quality of soil I'll be working with.  When I bought the orange tree, I purchased a bag of composted soil thinking the soil would need a boost.  Surprisingly enough, Leonel and I thought the soil was in pretty good shape.  Not great shape, so we added the compost anyway.


I've seen trees with dirt rings around them and have wondered why gardeners do it, well I quickly found out!  You can see that we piled dirt up around the trunk to make a ring too.  Watering seems to be more effective cause there's no runoff.  I just fill the depression (approx 8 inches) around the tree with water and it soaks straight down.

On the way to pick my daughter up from school, I passed some city work men fixing a pipe in the street.  The was a large pile of black, rich looking soil right next to them.  I stopped.  The men looked up and I asked if they were going to back fill that dirt.  They informed me that they were going to take the dirt to a disposal facility.  The pipe is going to be fitted with a concrete enclosure/box that will take up a lot of room.  My eyes got huge and I asked the men if they will be there for awhile.  They said yes.  Then I proceeded to tell them about my soil situation and if they'd be patient enough to wait a few minutes I'd be back with a car and a bunch of buckets to save them a trip to the disposal facility.  They were very excited, but I could tell they thought I was a weirdo.  Ha ha ha.

After filling both red buckets, I went back to dump them.  Whoa, they were so heavy!!!... and it barely made a dent in my future raise bed area.

All the gardening books talk about compost, so I hit the web to find the best system for what we are doing.  I knew for sure I didn't want an old school compost pile.  Los Angeles and most cities have ordinances against gross piles of rotting matter.  After an hour or so of light research, I came to the conclusion that the spinning barrel method is going to be the best.  The only problem is that store bought barrel composters are expensive! ($200+)  I didn't get discouraged, I just tried to figure out a way to get one for free!  Turns out there are a ton of guys on the web that have made their own composters.  One guy on YouTube told his viewers how to build a spinning barrel composter and how to get a barrel for free, he was right!  See that white barrel in the background.  It's mine and will soon be a composter.  

Yup, that's a car wash.  They get tons of soap every month in big 55 gallon/water tight barrels and are happy to give them away.  I know what you are thinking.  Aren't they toxic?  The EPA has mandated that car washes use biodegradable soap, so I rinsed it out and put it in my workshop for later.  There are a few designs I'm interested in, but I think a custom plan might be fitting for my situation.