DIYS GARDENING: Part IV

I know it's been quite awhile since blogging. A lot of the things I've been do in my garden happen last fall, so this may be a little out of sync.

I had finally finished framing and putting down pathway rock in my last segment. By mid October I had three four by eight foot framed boxes with nothing in them. I need topsoil or black dirt, lots of it, about 3 and a half cubic yards. Another way to look at it I need about 60 pounds of dirt per cubic foot. Soil ranges between 50-125 pounds per cubic foot depending on water content and density. I'll need about 3 tons of dirt with my current density of 60 pounds per cubic foot.

So where does one get dirt? Dirt is well, "dirt cheap." The trick is moving the dirt when you have a lot of it. I call around and find a truck load of dirt (about 1.5 tons) is around $70 hauled to your door. I'll need two truck loads, but I want to stay in my $50 a weekend project budget. So I have to find another solution. Hello Uhaul!

There is something wrong about be able to rent a pickup truck for $20 a day. I find a place to has soil for sale, and will load it for me. Saturday morning, I head to the Uhail store and get a pickup truck. It's a Ford F150. I install my GPS unit because i have no idea where I'm going and i don't want to pay for any unnecessary miles. I crank the country station on the radio and get in touch with my inner country cowboy.

The nice folks at S & G Materials fill the back of the pickup with 1.55 tons of rich black Iowa soil mined from a river bed. I pay $12.33 after the visiting the scales. I'm off for home. I spend the next 90 minutes filling a wheelbarrow and then dumping the soil into the garden frames. It's now past noon and I still need another load and I need to get the the pickup back to the Uhaul store before 4 PM so I can keep the day rate.

The second load goes as smoothly as the first. This time it's 1.27 tons at $10.10. It's a little less this time, because I'm worried about breaking the back axle. The truck did seem to be sagging quite a bit. After doing the "Fill and Dump" for another 90 minutes, the beds are filled. I use the powerwasher to clean the bed of the pickup and return it to the store by 4 pm.

I end up paying about $100 total between the dirt and the Uhaul pickup. Yes, it's over budget but at least the beds are done.