May 21, Friday

The garden is all in. In the old bed, at the back, 3 eggplants 18 inches apart. In the center, 12 inches from the eggplants, 3 bell pepper plants 12 inches apart. At the front my row of carrots, 12 inches from the peppers.

I left the grass beneath the new bed; it should die beneath the topsoil. I filled the bed with:

• 2/3 garbage can sod, now decomposed, dug up from the old bed when I planted it last year
• 2/3 garbage can mulched leaves from last fall
• 9-1/2 bags (1 cu ft each) mushroom compost
• 3 bags (40 lb each) manure compost
• 1 bag organic potting soil

In other words, I threw everything I had at it and it's still 2-3 inches low. Certainly leaves room for more compost as fertilizer throughout the summer.

I put in 6 tomato plants. They're about 9 inches from each side, so they're separated by roughly 30 inches left to right and 37 inches top to bottom.

Because the plants were large and the bed not full of compost etc, the rootballs of the tomatoes are sitting right on the grass I left beneath it all. I hope that's not a problem. I'm more concerned that I forgot to loosen the existing soil and sod with a garden rake before I filled the bed. In other words, I broke most of the rules. Let's hope plenty of TLC with compensate.