This past weekend brought beautiful weather, and quite a few sore muscles. I rented a gas-powered sod cutter to remove the sod from the new garden area. Cutting the sod itself was the easy part. After figuring out the controls for the thing, it was not much harder than pushing a lawn mower around the yard. Then came the hard work.
I tried to roll the sod up and away, but I found the rolls to be unwieldy, heavy, and they broke apart after moving them very far. So, I turned all the sod strips upside down (having the grass side down created less friction) and drug them over the stack for composting. I was surprised at the weight of even the small pieces of sod. It took most of the day Saturday for my wife and I to move it all. So the hard work is finally over, right? Wrong...
Now I have this wonderful clear space, but it is too hard for the rototiller to break through on its own. I took a round shovel and turned over a small section of the dirt and broke it into smaller chunks with the tip. Now the rototiller seems to do a good job. Based on how long it took to finish even a small section, I can see that this will take quite a bit of time to finish the entire area. Or, I might try to locate a larger rototiller that can take a bigger bite.
All in all, it was a productive weekend. I even managed to plant two rows of corn!
