Reshaping the Yard

I spent some of the last few weeks breaking ground on a garden here in Yellow Spring. Since we’re in a rental, I can’t make the garden quite as big as we would like, but I’m grateful that the owner is flexible enough to let us dig one at all. It should be a great learning experience for gardening in Ohio and prepare us for larger-scale operations when we find a permanent farmstead.

It will also be an experience in growing in soggy soil, the exact opposite issue from what I faced in Florida. It turns out that our yard is not a swamp merely due to the recent heavy rains, but our neighbors informed us that there is a natural spring under our area. It is one of the many springs that gives our village its name, and is already proving to be a bit of a gardening headache.

The picture above illustrates some of the challenges I’ve run into with the garden area. After several inches of rain in a week, the ground was super-saturated and I embarked on a plan to drain the yard using the trench I dug to the stream (temporarily a raging river rapids) at the back of the property.

After a few days the water level finally started dropping, but there is definitely a source spring feeding the yard because the trench continues to flow down to the stream.

So, I tried digging up the garden last weekend, but the soil was still too heavy to be workable (without throwing out my back, that is). Instead I worked on deepening the trench to get it to drain a bit faster and I’ll try again this weekend.

In the picture below you can see how I covered the ground with layers of leaves and cardboard, as well as dirt from the trench. This will hopefully break down and provide some good organic matter for the soil. I’m optimistic that the soil (once dry) will prove very rich, judging by the huge number of earthworms I uncovered in my digging.