Over the long weekend, Jericho and I made a garden bed. We picked a plot a few minutes walk from the new orchard and started by mowing a 100’ x 4’ area.

That’s Lucy, my mom’s lab, down near the end. Next we cut sod with shovels.

I dug too, but Jericho doesn’t take as many pictures as I do.

After that, we flipped sod. First one row of it:

And then the next row:

After all the sod was out, we dug a little more.

Then we put the sod at the bottom of the hole, upside-down, where it will hopefully die and contribute organic material to the soil.

And then we shoveled that dirt off the tarp, back into the hole on top of the sod, and raked it flat.

And again.

Until all the dirt was back in the bed.

This will be a garlic bed. We’ll plant the garlic in October. Until then, we put in a quick cover crop of oats.

Then I rubbed some dirt on my shirt to make it look like I helped too.

A few hours after we finished seeding, a nice thunderstorm rolled in and watered everything for us.

If all goes well, in about a month we’ll have some nice young oats to mow down before planting garlic in the bed.