How Does Your Garden Grow?: OWW. Amending Soil Hurts

I have complained on this blog many times about my obstinate, heavy, non-draining, angry, rock-filled clay soil. For this year's fall planting season I decided to do something about it. Before planting the 472 tulip, daffodil, pink oxalis and grape hyacinth bulbs that I accidentally bought this summer, I decided to dig 3 big flower beds, get rid of all the dirt and refill the beds with luscious, dark store-bought soil (I ended up planting 646 bulbs in all).

Like every other project I take on, it turned out to be WAY MORE WORK than I had ever imagined. There are 3 flowerbeds, each one is about 3 feet wide, approx. 20 feet long and one foot deep. Each bed holds approximately 1 gajillion pounds of heavy clay. At first my husband and I thought we could knock out the project over a few days. Sure, the digging wasn't fun and I am constantly mortified by how much stronger he is than I am, but we were making progress. Until Lawn Waste Trash Day. The guys didn't even attempt to take our 8 bags of heavy clay away. Instead, they put a big embarrassing neon green sticker on one bag that said "WRONG. LAWN CLIPPINGS ONLY." Blast. Now we had a problem because even though we could dig all day, we did not have the means to haul away 3 gajillion pounds of heavy clay.

I set to work through Craigslist and found some guys who would come out to dig the holes and haul the dirt. They worked for 10 hours digging and hauling. The poor guys didn't even have a pickax, so I let them use mine. Here is what one of the driveway beds looked like before:

and after:


I know it's hard to tell, but a foot down is deep. This is a picture of one of the workers standing in the hole:



This is the "short" bed at only 15 feet:


This bed, which fronts on the street, is longer than the car! Now it's filled with drowned tulips and topped with pansies.

As the guys finished digging a bed, my husband and I started to fill it with large bags of gypsum, soil conditioner and mushroom compost. We do not have a truck or a limitless supply of cash to spend on dirt, so after about 40 bags of dirt dumped into the gaping maw of earth made no dent in the work, we decided to mix in some of the original dirt. You have to use hoes and rakes to mix the compost, soil conditioner, gypsum and clay. It is hard work. We were covered with dirt when we finally came inside at 11:30pm and we were in unspeakable pain. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to peel off soil-caked clothing. It even hurt to lie down.

My only comfort was watching episode 3 of Glee on my Apple TV and drinking tea spiked with vodka (which, by the way, is divine).