Memories of grade 9...

There is still a ton of snow in the backyard, but I don't care because 

I can see my dirt! 

Dirt, dirt, wonderful dirt. Or not-so-wonderful in this case. The soil in my original two raised beds seem to be turning into a lovely loamy soil, but the stuff I bought to put in my new bed last year was TERRIBLE. Note to anyone who is considering buying the soil from Canadian Tire - don't! I had looked it up and based on the description, it seemed very nice and was a good price. Unfortunately, what it didn't say on the bag was that it was mostly peat moss, not the nice soil mixture that I had been led to believe. 

After putting in my 30 bags of soil, I therefore ended up with a whole bed full of nutritionally-defunct, environmentally debatable peat moss. Ugh. Barely anything grew there last year. I had corn that was 1.5 feet tall, lettuce that never passed an inch, and pumpkins with horrific powdery mildew. 

So now that I can dig in the soil a bit, my son and I did some science experiments! We did PH and Nutrient testing this weekend with the little nutrient test kit I picked up. 

Low and behold, the PH was under 6 (meaning it was quite acidic) and there was little-to-no nitrogen or phosphorus. This was compared against my test bed (the older one), which had a PH of 7 (neutral), and generally sufficient amounts of each major nutrient.

This is the better one. Isn't it pretty?

So I guess it's time to get some lime (for the PH) and then a nice big load of compost! The new bed gets so much sun, I'd hate to waste that space for another year. 

On another note, here's my 20-month-old who finally was allowed to use the coveted watering can. :)

Little guys can help too!