Michele asked what soil amendments we were planning on using in our beds.  Primarily I use Tagro.  I have a well documented past with the stuff.  I did an experiment last season with the tomatoes.  I planted 4 in a bed that was only amended with Tagro and 6 in beds that were 100% Tagro mix (not potting soil).  The plants in the 100% mix performed better than any tomato I’ve ever grown.  It could have something to do with the bed location, but I’m hedging my bets on the Tagro.  This a far cry from the girl right out of college who though bio-solid fertilizers were not safe.

This season I plan to use Tagro once again.  The expansion of the garden will require us to purchase the mix instead of the bucket method of last year (if you go to the Tagro facility you can shovel as much as you like for free).  We are estimating 10 yards to complete the garden.  Since our soil is very hard from years of compaction we are taking the lazy man’s way out with building the garden.  I’ve been hoarding newspaper and cardboard and I’ll rake all of the Photinia leaves once we are ready.  I will lay down many layers of paper and cardboard and then the Tagro on top.  We are not removing the grass underneath.  This will either work out well or be a very bad thing.  I hoping for the former.

We are also putting in a meandering gravel path, but we will put landscape fabric under that.  We would eventually like to till the garden beds, but not the path.

As for the raised beds in the back we will amend those with Tagro too.  In addition I add Soundgro to those and I’ll sprinkle in a little bid of worm castings.

Next year we should be able to rent a full sized rototiller for the main garden and add more Tagro and various manures.

Now the straight Tagro method may not work for the full vegetable garden since Tagro is a little more acidic than I would like, but again gardening is trial and error.