Think of it as a construction site.

Yes, I know. It's messy. This is the stage that the garden is in. Just imagine what it will look like in only a few weeks with our combined efforts! I look out at our garden and, in my mind's eye, I see friendly crops interspersed for optimal companion planting and to attract beneficial insects. I see the tilth in the soil, and I see the first harvests of salad mixes, full of vitality and high in nutrition, going home in bags with you, and our fast-growing varieties of cabbages and broccoli getting well established in their beds, the beet greens growing among them. The summer seedlings ready to transplant from the cold frame in the back yard to the beds in the front.

But, yes, we have digging to do. It will be good exercise, and once it's done, we have excellent soil for our vegetables to thrive in. Sail into the wind, as they say. The only way to get through it is to do it.

Update about our fertilizer: thought I'd share with you what is going into our vegetables. We're using ingredients that, together, make a safe and balanced complete organic fertilizer.
We're also using only animal-free ingredients in our fertilizer - that is, no blood meal, no bonemeal, no feathermeal. This is for several reasons. Our vegetables are only as nutritious and healthy as the ingredients that go into them. Factory-farmed animals - the source for animal-based fertilizers - are fed genetically modified grains such as corn and soy. These grains are thoroughly soaked in pesticides through their life cycle, and then they bioaccumulate in the animals. The combination of genetically modified DNA and heavy amounts of pesticides in our fertilizer, in and of themselves, run counter to our objective - healthy food! This is not why we want to garden. Although organic gardeners and farmers can technically use these materials and still be called organic, I think we can do better.

Another reason is, such crops are nutritionally quite depleted, so the end product, grown on feed from these crops, doesn't have a lot to offer our plants, which, in turn, will have less, nutritionally, to offer us.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, buying these products helps to support a monstrously cruel industry. So I don't purchase them, as that would be effectively paying people good money to hurt sentient beings. That's not what our garden is about, either!

So, you are the proud members of a pretty much vegan garden! Who knew?? Well, we do use the composted manure of two very happy, very spoiled horses. I don't think that counts....

Everything else comes straight from the source:

kelp
soft rock phosphate
limestone
alfalfa seed meal
greensand
lava rock dust (with paramagnetic qualities, lava rock dust re-mineralizes the soil, improves drought- and frost-hardiness, improves growth, and provides other beneficial effects)

And, coming soon: Mycorrhizal fungi. See: http://www.mycoapply.com/ Using mycorrhizal fungi increases produce's brix ratings dramatically, meaning it's high in nutrients, tastes orders of magnitude better than average, grows better, fights pests and disease better, and grows larger while maintaining quality. (For information on brix gardening, see http://www.highbrixgardens.com. They sell an awful lot of product, and I take that with a grain of salt. But what I do know is that if you eat a carrot with a high brix rating, you will say it's the best carrot you've ever eaten in your whole life.)

So, with the proper applications of compost, high-quality horse manure, our complete organic fertilizer, mycorrhizae, and the excellent varieties of crops we're growing, we're giving our garden the best possible start. I hope you're as excited as I am!