Still from the new Garden Cam of Richard digging in the garden.

What’s better than a garden cam? Two garden cams! I’m hoping, actually we’re hoping, to have the second one up and running in about another week.

[Edit: The second one is now up and running. You can view it here.]

The garden is constructed with 42-inch wide paths, just wide enough to accommodate the garden cart. The paths have never been tilled. They are essentially the tops of clay walls in the ground since the natural “soil” in this area is clay, nearly pure enough to make earthenware pottery (Don’t think I haven’t considered doing it). The deep garden beds go down 20 inches with another 6 inches or so of top soil rising above grade. That gives us a 26-inch depth of rich soil fortified with horse manure and worm castings.

The width of the deep beds varies from 4 feet to 6 feet. The original plan was to let grass grow on the paths but the grass, dandelions, and other aggressive plants have shown considerably more interest in expanding into the garden beds than I like. Ergo, the reconstruction project.

The strings you see on the above cam image are set up to indicate where the paths are, more or less precisely, so that we can lay down salvaged silt fencing (see video below). Richard is in the garden, digging the edge of a path.

If you get in the habit of checking out the garden, you’ll likely see more of Richard (also the worm meister), and me, too. And maybe some robins and maybe a rabbit or a squirrel or a chipmunk.

I expect that the garden cam will be running all the time with occasional commentaries spicing things up now and then. Here’s hoping you’ll like what you see, and read, about the progress of the garden throughout the season.

View the live garden cam here.