Inner City Farmer

Guess who’s back playing in the mud? After staying indoors for what seemed like an eternity away from the summer heat, I have emerged from my summer hibernation. Several weekends ago, I was given a metal tool shed that will finally give me some place to store all my tools. It came with a roof and four walls, but, alas, no floor. Most people would have simply poured a concrete slab and called it good. But, as you surely know by now, I hate concrete worse than I hate Nazis.

So I started digging a square hole in the ground.

Then I dug trenches on the outer edge of the square hole so that water would drain away from the future floor.

Next I filled in the hole with all the septic gravel that was left over from making the earth floor in the Man Cave.

After erecting the tool shed, I then starting digging clay from my pit/future pond in my back yard. Thanks to the drought, the clay was rock hard so I soaked it in water, let it dry a little in the sun, then sifted it through a wire screen.

Just as I did on the previous earth floor, I used two parts coarse gravel and one part clay for the first layer. It’s like slicing cold butter into a flour mixture when making a pie crust. All the little bits of butter/clay should get completely covered by the flour/sand. I then pounded this layer with a tamper.

I’m going to let it dry a little–the clay was still quite moist when I mixed it with the sand–before I start on the next layer.