Excavating the Raised Garden

During all the work on the backyard, Linda has been continuing to work in her raised garden.  The pathway across the back yard was built around the raised garden.

The sides of the raised garden are railroad ties, but over time they have settled.  Before we can put the flagstones on the path, I think we need to seriously address the raised garden.  The sides of it need to be well supported.  I am thinking of replacing the railroad ties with solid limestone blocks.

To do that, I will need to dig down to create a foundation to put the limestone blocks on.  So first, I remove the railroad ties.

Then I start digging, taking out both the soil that was brought in to make the raised garden, but also the sub-soil below it.  This exposes that the railroad ties were placed on a layer of concrete pads, 12 inches square by 1 inch deep.  We leave those in place to define the edge of the raised garden.

And digging.

Until I hit bedrock.

And then I extend the digging around the back of the raised garden.  Pulling rock out of the dirt, as well as the dirt itself.  The dirt has a nice top layer but very quickly becomes very heavy clay soil, still damp despite weeks without rain.

We continue to dig, around the edges of the garden.

and continue

and continue

Until days later, we have cleared out all the way around the raised garden, plus about half of the entire contents.

This lets us get out all the rock that is in there, down to bedrock.  Now we can see how the rock floor varies in height.  We will want to pour a concrete footing that will be even all the way around.

Finally, 21 days after we started, we have excavated the entire raised garden.

Removing the old olive tree

The old olive tree, in the South Bed, is just not thriving.  It seems not to like neither the cold nor the heat.   The other two olive trees are doing much better, growing bigger and faster.

So I took it out. We considered this possibility when we were excavating the south bed.

I dug down and took out the rock that was under it.

and then filled it back in with dirt and compost.  The drip irrigation system in this area needed to be repaired.

and then 5 bags of mulch on top of the area to cut down on the weeds and evaporation.

Drip Irrigation for Zone 2

10 August 2012

Time to add the drip irrigation system for Zone 2.

The first problem is attaching to the water supply line.  We can dig up the Zone 2 valve, and then attach to it. We need first a filter, then a pressure reduction unit, and then we can start adding the drip irrigation.

There is a slope from one end of Zone 2 (by the gate) down to the rain barrel, so we design the drip irrigation system to run from the house to the path, rather than the long way.

We have a lot of parts and tubing left from our earlier projects, but we do need a bunch more of the Tee connectors, and eventually we needed another 100 feet of the drip irrigation tubing.  No one here in town seems to sell it in less than 500 feet, but Sprinkler Warehouse in Houston sold me 100 feet of XFS-06-12 with next day Fedex shipping for $40.71.

Once the irrigation system is put in place, we then needed 4 inches of dirt to cover it.  We bought 8 cubic yards, which should be more than enough.

 and the result is a nice clean Zone 2, ready for planting.

Finishing the excavation of Zone 2

While we are trying to fill the backyard with dirt (and leaves), there is still a bit of digging that is needed for Zone 2.  Zone 2 is the area between the house and the new path, starting at the gate to the backyard, expanding out around the Chinese Pistache tree and then narrowing down to nothing where the path meets the back patio.

We've dug up all along the house, plus the area down by the patio, and out along the path up to where the irrigation water supply for the North Bed runs under the path.  That leaves just the point of the area North of the tree.

It takes several days to remove the dirt, sort out the rock and get down to the big slab of dirt at the bottom.  We want to try to avoid the roots.  We find a number of old Coke cans, beer cans, paint rags, and especially chunks of asphalt.

Finally we have the dirt removed from most of the area, and can clearly see the rock slab.

A couple of hours of using the jack hammer reduces this one big rock to a lot of smaller rocks.  We leave a section of the rock right next to the path, because part of it underlays the path wall.

Once we get all this rock out, we are able to get a couple of rocks out from under the tree itself.

 This creates a "cave" that goes right in under the tree, showing how much rock is still left. 

 Continuing the excavation, we get all the way around the tree to where we were in November 2011, finishing the excavation for Zone 2. 

The next step is to fill all this back in with dirt.  We want it to be about 4 inches below the final level.  After it settles, we will put in underground drip irrigation in this section, put 4 more inches of dirt over that, and be ready to plant.

After a couple more weeks, we have this area completely filled in.  Now we just need to wait to let it settle.

Filling in the Backyard Pit

Having excavated most of the rock out of the backyard, now it is time to fill it back in.

This takes lots of time, and seems to make little progress.  The dirt in the pile has to be loosened up, mixed with lots of leaves, and then dumped into the pit.

Eventually, making my way across the yard, the pile of compost and mulch gets in the way, so I have to move it to another area of the yard.

Since the area in the front, with the grass has not yet been dug up, I want to leave some room to be able to do that, so I try to stick close to the cement wall for the walkway.

As we go around the corner, it is obvious that some of this needs to be dug up and cleaned, to clear a path for filling in the pit.

These big rocks, by the base of the tree, should be removed, while I have the chance.

That leaves it much cleaner, with room for dirt to be moved from the pile into this newly cleared area.

And so, over time, we are working to fill this in with a mixture of leaves and dirt.

This is slow going.  Partly, it takes time to mix the dirt and leaves, and partly the dirt pile is in the middle of the yard and so is in direct sunlight most of the day, making it difficult to work on it for very long in the Texas summer heat.

Decomposed Granite for the path

With the path sides complete, I can now fill the area between.  Most of it has been filled with limestone rock rubble from the digging, but now for the top we put down a layer of decomposed granite.  We needed about half a cubic yard to finish it.  We got that from Whittlesey Landscape Supplies, for $17.11, putting it in plastic bags from the hardwood mulch and carrying it in the back of the Forester.

 This should finish off the pathway, at least to make it usable, while everything settles.  Eventually we will put flagstones down on it.

Laying down the limestone blocks on top of the cement walls

On both sides of the new path, and alone the fence, we have poured cement walls, down to bedrock, leaving enough room to put 4x4 inch limestone blocks on the top.  All of this will be underground except the top surface of the limestone blocks which will be the dividing line between the path and the beds on both sides.  For this last set of stones, it seems we want it to match the quality of the stones for the patio, so I figured I should hire a professional, rather than doing it myself.

I hired two guys, working as Saul's Masonry, 512-939-7656.  They came out and we talked over what I wanted, and agreed on a price of $400.  I figured there was about 100 linear feet of stones to be laid.

The most important part is of course the path. 

So they started there, putting down a bed of mortar and laying the stones on that, keeping everything level.

Going down the long side and then coming back and doing the shorter piece.

In addition, we have the cement wall under the fence.




This is easier, since it's just a straight line.  But still, doing a good job is important.  And apparently I should have made the wall slightly higher so they had to use more mortar to make up the difference.



The whole thing took about 6 hour, and looks good.  As they were finishing up, it starts to rain, but only enough to keep things wet.

Finishing the main backyard pit

Having dug out along the fence, and finished putting in a cement wall to outline the backyard along the fence, we then want to finish digging out the main pit and start filling it back in.  We had left a peninsula sticking out into the pit.

 It seems it would be easier to restart the digging if this edge of the part of the yard that has been processed if this was a straight line, so we began digging out that part.

 It took about 3 days to dig that out, separate out the rocks and mix the dirt that remains with leaves and spread it all out.

Burying the Cat (again)

Back in 2002, our cat, Pepper, died.  We buried her in the backyard, along the fence.  I'm now digging up along the fence.

I think I know where she is buried, and after some work, I found her.  Or at least parts of her.  Her skull was the most obvious part, and once that was located, other bones -- ribs, backbone, hip, legs -- were located.

I put her remaining bones into a nicely decorated clay pot

and reburied them at the bottom of zone 2.

 with a flat piece of flagstone on top.

This should be a quiet spot for her remains, out of the way, and unlikely to be further disturbed.