Bed #1 (180 sq ft)
Down on hands and knees (the most comfortable position for this task), I chopped out the invading grass in this small pineapple patch. Dang that bermuda grass! Dumped a couple of wheelbarrows of compost and very lightly tilled it in between the plants, but didn't till up to the plants at all. Didn't want to chop up the plant roots. Then I brought over some of the grass clippings from the other day and laid down a 4-6 inch layer, which will settle down to about 1" thick.
Bed #2 (77 sq ft)
Using the lawnmower, I scalped the grass down in this section that we had used for gardening before. So I wasn't worried about hitting any rocks with the mower. Attacking the old bed with a garden fork, I worked out the bermuda grass that I could find. Adding two wheelbarrows of compost, I finished up the job with the rototiller. Ah-ha......a ready garden bed! I planted three wide rows of beans, Maxibels, my neighbor's favorite. After all, this particular garden bed is in his backyard (we share the gardening areas), so he deserves his Maxibels.
In that I'm adverse to leaving soil uncovered, I applied a very light covering of mulch to the seeded bed. As long as the mulch isn't thick, the beans will sprout through it.
Above, the mulch looks thick but it's not. In fact, it barely covers the soil surface. You can see in the photo below that there's plenty of soil showing through.
The idea is to lightly shade the soil surface in order to help keep the sun and wind from drying it out and killing the soil microbes. Those microbes, after all, are the things that give me my plant food.
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