Finishing the Excavation of the South Bed

Having the cement wall and limestone block wall under the fence to define one side of this bed, we turn our attention to finishing the excavation. There is a clear layer of rock, about a foot thick which can be removed.



Starting at the low spot, we first start removing the rock along the side of the greenhouse, moving North.



We break the rock up between the olive tree and the greenhouse and haul it off



And then continue around the olive tree up to the stone wall.



breaking the rock into as pieces as large as we can manage



and clearing it out, to create a lower floor for this pit. We are about 4 feet down at the stone wall.

Once that section has been excavated, we then turn back and do the same to the section along the fence.



The utility trench forms one side of the area we want to excavate -- up to the olive tree. Again, we break up the rock.



Again, we haul all this rock off, putting it out on the driveway, to empty out the South Pit.



With all this rock gone, we can now start filling this pit back up with dirt. We bring back the dirt that we dug out, mixing it with leaves and grass to improve the quality of the dirt. We want good drainage around the olive tree and good soil.

Should the olive tree not make it, we will want to dig down and take out the last layer of rock that is immediately under it. We don't want to try to remove the rock from directly under the tree at this point.