Soil arrives for the vege garden

Today we had the soil for our vege garden delivered. We have really awful soil in Brisbane and half our section has clay for soil - not the best for growing awesome veges! So we bought 4 cubic metres of premium garden soil for .... $68 a cubic metre plus $30 delivery. Expensive it may be but totally worth it! So I've included some photos of the days efforts! And what an effort it was!!

Paul getting started on moving the soil to into the garden beds on the other side of the water tank

The empty garden beds ready for soil

And we finally made a dent in the pile. Paul was digging and I was spreading it in the beds. We shared moving the wheel barrow loads from one location to the other.

Whoops - the tree got stuck in the truck as he lowered the back. So as he drove out he took part of the tree with him. But it was ok after Paul gave all the ripped branches a trim.

Paul finishing off the final 2 boards for the garden beds

Another one of Paul's master pieces. We finally realised that gravity wasn't going to be enough to get water out of our tank. So we bought an automatic water pump for $150 from Bunnings (yay for Bunnings). Then he bought a bunch of boy toys (tools, piping, "elbows" etc etc) and set up a tap linked to the tank via the pump (the pump is situated just under the house). Very clever!!

The first two beds are filled - now we need to clear the junk out of the 3rd bed.

All the dirt has been moved to the garden beds - now it's clean up time. Stink! And guess who got to clean up! Good husband!! Well trained!!
Since we're still in a drought we still have fairly tight water restrictions. So Paul was using the tank water to clean the drive way.

Almost done! Just cleaning the wheel barrow.

All done!
We need to wait for the soil to settle in the first 2 beds for a few weeks. So the extra soil is stored in the 3rd bed. Eventually we will clear the grass out of the paths between the garden beds and put in some stone paths :-) But that's for another day.

We had a little extra soil so we put some around our citrus trees as they have pretty bad soil around them - the guy who planted them had NO idea! He planted 2 of the trees straight into clay! We also gave 2 wheel barrow loads to Maureen across the road. She's really lovely :-) She popped her head across while we were moving the dirt and offered us some of her tools. So we borrowed her wheel barrow so both of us could move the soil and got it done much quicker. She also gave us some of her old garden tools to keep - nice aye! Her husband died a couple of months ago which was really sad, so her heavy garden work is done by others who have their own tools.

By the end of the day I was so knackered! It has been a long time since I didn't something so hard! I put in my fair share of digging etc - I even went solo for a while when Paul's mum rang up for a chat :-) I am not looking forward to waking up tomorrow and feeling some new muscles that haven't been used for a while - ha ha!

The next task is the best one! Now we get to plan what we're going to plant :-) Since it's heading towards winter we are a little restricted - but there is still lots we can plant. I can't wait!! I just need to get a job now so we can afford to continue our projects.