Preparing for a Waffle Garden

I was digging out a new garden while I was looking up the waffle garden information, so I figured, why not make my own waffle garden this year?

More rock than garden

As you may be able to tell from the above picture, the first thing I had to do is to get rid of a lot of gravel and rocks on top of my dirt. This involved scooping up the gravel and pouring it into a screen over my wheel barrow to save the dirt.

Then I collected a few wheelbarrows worth of gravel to save.

Then, I had to dig up the dirt. I dug in about 8-12 inches, which takes both a shovel and pick with hard dirt like mine, but hoo boy did I luck out! My shovel scraped against the side of a rock rather than pounding right into it, and when I tried to dig it out, I found out it was piping for my pool equipment!

The pool piping circled in red

Like so much in my yard and my house, it makes no sense. This piping is away from the pool and the pool equipment. There is no reason for it to be there except perhaps laziness if they were only putting in piping in areas that had dirt which was easier to dig up. Thankfully, because I only scraped it, I didn't damage the pipe. I just marked it and kept digging.

This entire process took me about three days. The pick is a bit heavy for me so I can't use it for too long without my muscles giving out - nothing makes you feel like a wimp faster than doing some heavy digging! But I eventually got it done, so go me! ^_^

As I go along here, I'm going to be using some of the techniques I've read about in a few of the links I found online, plus a bit of 'figure-this-out-on-the-fly.' The weather has become so hot, so fast, that I don't really have time to do as much research as I'd like before I start. As in, nearly none. So I'm sure I'll make some spectacular failures that I'll find out about within days of making this. Eh, the more memorable the failure, the more you learn, right?

Now, on to making a waffle garden!