Garden Soil

I worked my plot yesterday. At the end of last year, I sheet composted over the whole plot. I collect coffee grounds from work, grass clippings from my Dad and shredded leaves from the neighborhood. I layered all of these things along with all of the plant material from my plot all over my plot. The only weeds I had to pull yesterday were a few dandelions and thistle. The ground was soft as we walked across the plot - not hard as cement clay like the first year. I have set up my plot with two two foot paths running from one end to the other. This creates three 4 by 16 foot beds. The last two years these paths ran East/West and this year I have them running North/South. I dug out where the new paths would be and put down newspaper and covered that with the woody plant material left over from last year. Then I covered that with shredded leaves. I will add grass clippings and more leaves throughout the year. As I dug I noticed so many worms. There were handfull size clumps of half rotten leaves that had 5+ worms in them. I saw nightcrawlers, little worms, fat worms, red wrigglers, just tons of worms. They were not here three years ago. When I intersected the old East/West paths I dug down even deeper pulling up nice crumbly tilth created by two years of heavy mulching. Some packaging tape was all that was left of the numerous cardboard boxes I had used. I left the garden pretty happy to have made that soil noticeably better in the last two years. I also couldn't stop thinking about whether we will be here in another 2 years... or ten.