Sprouts, and Soil Mathematics

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I’m very excited about these little radish sprouts. They made it through our worst freeze so far. I looked at them today at lunch, and I swear they’ve grown visibly since I took this picture over the weekend. The sun has been out for a number of hours now, and they (as well as probably every other living thing in Austin) have been drinking up the sun as much as the land swallowed the rain over the past few days.

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I don’t have a whole lot to say about this really. But I did notice the rain must have caused the soil in this box to compact considerably. Previously, the dirt was a couple inches from the top. Now it’s maybe 4 or 5 inches down. Sometime last week, I calculated the volume of soil this box can hold: 14 cubic feet. That does seem like a lot in raw numbers, but most of the bags you can buy at Home Depot or the like hold .75 cu. ft. each. So, almost 19 bags at about $3.50 each equals $66.50 to fill just one box. The Natural Gardener, with its bulk soil yard, starts to seem like a good deal. My truck – a Toyota Tacoma – only holds a little over a half cubic yard, or roughly 14 cubic feet. That’s a long drive to fill one box, but it costs roughly half the bagged compost at Home Depot.

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