We continue to try to get the best out of our soil at the farm, but for some plants a heavy silt loam is never to their liking. Such is the case with some of our herbs. When we were in Upstate New York we seem to remember one tarragon plant growing as tall as your head in their sandy soil and being enough for the whole CSA. Our plants do not do as well, to say the least.

So we are building a raised bed for some of these herbs, in an attempt to make them happier. The soil mix we are trying is roughly 1/3 sand, 1/3 compost and 1/3 topsoil. A little wood ash, a quick mix, and voilà, an herb garden.

The other factor that helped us decide to try this out is that we are cleaning up an old pile of building stones from behind the barn as part of our farm beautification. These wonderful limestone blocks came from our barn’s old foundation wall that was replaced in 2004. While there is only a limited amount of stones, we may build another raised bed if this one proves beneficial.

Here is the stop action video of the project. A higher resolution version is available on YouTube