If you ever had the desire to create a garden or maybe fix low spots in the yard. The price of dirt can kill you. Actually the delivery is often the price of an extra cubic yard (or cubic meter). So someone says free Dirt. I get excited knowing it’ll be dumped for nothing too.
For those people who are unfamiliar with dirt purchasing, it comes several ways. Really good stuff that crumbles by hand, loaded with sand and organic materials. Good stuff that kinda crumbles with less organic material and no sand. Fill dirt or clay which is slightly softer than concrete. The later is what I have here.
You may notice in the cart clumps of clay. Free means busting them up with shovel into golf ball sized pieces. Below is great dirt at $28/cubic yard. No working will bring this clay to that level.
I have had the pleasure of moving around four to five cubic yards of dirt each year. We have almost 4 acres (3 hectares). The dirt isn’t getting any lighter.
That’s the first eight cart full. That’s a yard and a half of clay. It’ll be coveted in peat moss and someday will have green grass on it. More important the mower will not keep hitting the ground bending blades. I have another 5 yards waiting for me. So back to work
Coloring Outside the Lines 
That does look like a lot of work! Can’t beat free dirt! Even in the land of dirt we have to buy it! LOL!
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It about killed me. Thirty two loads of dirt. Now I have to seed it with grass
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That is a LOT of work! Once you seed it do you have to worry about keeping it watered or does it rain a lot there?
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While it’s been forecast for a week, not enough to wet the ground. It’s normally rains in June here. So if it starts before July, it should take well. After that the rain holds off until September. We get thunderstorms but no normal rainfall
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Oh, then that means you don’t have to water it like we have to here in the desert.
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The garden gets watered once or twice a week unless we get an inch of rain. Once the grass and plants are established they are good to go. But veggies need water. 🙂
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Everything needs to be watered here except for the trees that are well established.
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Do you mulch plants or run drip lines to conserve water?
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I use to mulch my plants but I have never run drip lines.
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Drip lines are great once they are set up. They can be a pain doing that since the plastic lines like to curl up. But they put water right at the plant
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I forgot that I did have a drip hose on some evergreen trees that I had planted. That was years ago.
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I set them up once at a different hide where everything was close together. They worked good once the lines straightened out
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My sister use to use a lot of drip lines on her plants. Hers seem to work pretty well too.
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They’re really help especially where you are. Here the help in middle is summer and don’t require as much work.
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I always had to shovel free dirt for my family in B.C Lol
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I’m about fifteen loads in. This was fun at one point in my life. Growing things is really cool. But I’m dying for grass. I’m feeling the years right now. 😃
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