From Grass to Garden in Two Days
We are finally in a spot where we have a sunny backyard and vegetables will grow. Fortunately we have an area at our new house that is sort of a raised bed. It isn’t the prettiest thing considering it is built with cinder blocks but hey, I won’t be complaining come harvest of some fresh vegetables. And since we are making an effort to live more sustainably, we consider growing our own food to eat a great opportunity to practice sustainable living.
We spent 2 solid days weeding this garden bed which is about 7 ft. x 20 ft. Originally we were going to rototill it. Since we don’t own a rototiller we offered to trade some heirloom vegetable starts for use of someone elses rototiller. Once we got in the garden though we realized how important it would be for the health of the soil to till by hand and pull weeds. So we set on a weeding weekend extravaganza. Let me tell you, we had a lot of weeds. All sorts of dandelions, cousins of dandelions and lots of crabby grass. If you have even the slightest area of soil that isn’t rock hard you can hand till that section and you will save yourself a lot of money by not having to recondition your soil.
The kids were all around and we had to stop to help them, feed them and play with them several times during the day so I guess someone else could have weeded the garden even faster but after we were done weeding we made our pathways. Since our garden is 7 ft. x 20 ft. I made the row along the fence about 18 inches wide and it goes the entire length of the fence. We obviously won’t have a problem reaching for weeds with the planting row only 18 inches wide. We will use this space for small plants like lettuce, strawberries and cucumbers that will be trellised on the fence.
The walkway is about another 12-18 inches. Then there are 4 more garden beds that make up the rest of the area. Each one is about 4×4 ft. This means we will be able to reach 2 ft. into the garden area from each side so that weeding and planting will be easy.
Once I plotted the garden and had the walkways in now I could walk around in the garden without compacting my nice, loose, fertile soil. Well, at least I hope it’s fertile. Just in case it’s not, I added soil sweetener to it. Soil sweetener is very appealing because it actually smells really sweet. It’s derived from volcanic ash and remineralizes your garden soil. Next I added some really nice compost to the top of the soil. I spread it out, gently raking it into the surface layer of the garden. Then I got the soil all nice and wet so I could activate the soil sweetener since it comes in a granular form. (This photo is pre-compost and soil sweetener)
We are using what our garden has to offer by putting some dirt in the cinder blocks and adding some seeds of flowers that will bring beneficial insects to our garden. We will also be stringing some twine onto the fence to grow the vining cucumbers up. This will save garden space and give them the afternoon shade they prefer. This year we will also be trellising our tomatoes in the effort to save space.
The first items that have been planted in the garden are strawberries. We put in about 15 plants, courtesy of our nice neighbors who work for the University of Oregon Landscape Department. Lettuce makes a good border around strawberries so I will be companion planting lettuce seeds tomorrow.
I’ll share more pictures as things get interesting.
