#2 Adventures in Tilling

The next step in my gardening plan is to till the land.  Technically, I was supposed to do the tilling starting the fall before planting, but I hadn't realized I wanted to do a garden then, so here I am in winter.  I could start in the spring instead, but I feel like this endevour is more likely to be successful if I give myself plenty of time to work on it little by little day by day, especially since I always underestimate the time and effort a project will take.

Two nights ago we went out to the area that is going to be my garden and Kevin and I decided to go to the end and divide off a section to attempt to dig at and till up.  It wasn't a very big section about 3'x6' maybe, but the dirt there is rock hard.  I can't even get the shovel in father than an 1".  My dad didn't have a rake so Kevin and I decided to go to the home depot to find some more tools.

These are the tools I found and decided to buy:

Unfortunately they didn't help all that much with the problem of super hard dirt.  The only solution I've come up with thus far is just to pick at it in a more layer by layer fashion, chipping dirt off the top.  This is painstaking, but until I find another way to do it it's the only way I've got.

Yesterday I got out of class to late to try and work at all, but today I came home at 2:00 pm and found that Kevin had raked the entire area for me, which was super sweet and it looks much better.  No more weeds.

We've discovered that because there used to be grass there before my dad killed it, there's about 2 inches of sod dirt that is easy to till.  Under the sod dirt however, the rock hard dirt still exists. 

The other problem I've run into is that about 50% or so of the dirt is little tiny pebbles.  This is not good.  My produce plants will not have a lot of luck growing in pebble dirt.  So I have to come up with a way to sift the dirt.  I found this link on How to Make a Sifter.  My dad says he'll help me build it.