Unexpected Gifts for the Garden

As I mentioned in my last post, we ran into septic problems within four days of moving into our cottage.  Last Friday, the municipal crew arrived on site and began digging to provide us with a sewer line connection.  Our own contractor showed up later that day to begin work on getting pipe from that connection to the house.

The first bed done!



They had an awful time digging as it seems our cottage is built on a bed of sedimentary rock.  When the town originally put the sewer line down the street, they had a lot of blasting to do.  Close to the road, the rock has shattered and can be dug up fairly easily.  Close to our house it was a very different story.  The contractor managed to get to the front of the foundation and that was it.  So instead of a pipe running along the outside wall, the pipe now goes through the crawl space.

When I came home for lunch on Friday, there was a lovely pile of shattered shale in the front yard.  I could hardly contain my excitement - free building materials!  Saturday morning, I began building my first raised bed in earnest, stacking slabs of shale to form the bed walls.  The contractor also offered to push a couple of larger boulders into place for us when I expressed interest in saving them instead of having them removed. 

I've placed an order for an extra tandem truck load of crushed stone as I like landscaping with this material.  I've also ordered some topsoil to help us get the garden started. I want to do some planting this year so the lasange gardening method will be reserved for beds built later this season - more on that later.