Step 1: Start from Scratch

Glenn and I (Miranda) have a pretty great track record of not being able to keep anything alive. From pets to plants, we've basically failed completely to keep anything alive for more than a few months. Tops. So the decision to build a garden was pretty difficult in that we knew we'd be starting from scratch and having to learn how to do this whole.. not letting stuff die thing.

So we dove in and studied like it was time for finals.

So after reading several books, magazines, and googling like we've never googled before, here's how we started:

1. Find a spot.

A sunny spot outside of the fence in the backyard seemed perfect. So Glenn went to Lowe's, bought a shovel and carved out a perfect rectangle on the southeast corner of the lot. Since we wanted to do it the organic way we needed to try to get deep enough to remove all of the grass and the weeds (there were a ton!) so that we wouldn't need to use any chemicals. 

2. Dig.

With that shovel and a wheelbarrow, he turned that yard into this:

3. A whole lotta other cr*p.

After discovering that the soil half a foot under all that dug up grass and weeds happened to be clay we did some research and figured out that we needed to amend the soil. We added some nitrates and composted manure.

4. Tear that sucker up!

After adding some compost and nitrates our next step was to roto-til the whole thing in order to loosen up the soil and mix in the compost and plant food. After a trip to our closest True Value we went at it!  

(The bags in the front are the rose bushes that we planted and then covered in order to protect them from frost.)

and here's what we got:
mmmm, now there's some nice soil.