This year you want to make a garden. You’ve tried before with little success, and you’ve decided to make it happen this year. But there’s all this ground in your yard and you don’t know how to start. Where do you begin? My best advice to new gardener’s is to use raised-bed gardening. It helps cut down on weeding and provides an instantly wonderful growing medium for your plants.
Now is the time to build your garden. Here is my list of steps to help you get started this year. No tools needed.
Materials Needed:
16 cinder blocks
Newspapers
One bag manure
One bag sand
One bag peat
Six bags of top soil
Find a spot that gets sunlight for at least eight hours a day. No shade trees nearby, no other plants growing around the area that might pollute your food garden.
Lay the cinder blocks out in a square or rectangle.
Line the bottom of the square with thick, thick layers of newspaper. Be sure to line under the cinder blocks to keep weeds from growing out of the holes in the blocks.
If you have raw compost, spread a layer over the newspaper.
Pour three bags of dirt over that layer.
Add a layer of leaves if you have them.
Pour the sand, peat moss and manure next.
Top with the remaining top soil. Add top soil into the holes in the cinder blocks.
Congratulations, you’ve built a raised-bed garden. Think of it as a large flower pot where you will be growing your veggies.
PLANTING
Beets
Carrots
Romaine
Spinach
Sweet Pepper
Cabbage
Onions
Chard
You choose the seeds according to when you’ll be planting. For a good planting guide, go to http://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-dates/zipcode/38401. Choose your planting dates according to where you live.
Remember when you plant, slightly water the soil first, and then put the seed in the prepped soil. You only want to plant as deep as the seed is large. For myself, when I plant a new bed outdoors, I cover it with landscape cloth to keep the cats from digging in the soil. That also allows me to plant early.
These plants need their own beds or prepped areas away from your raised-bed garden:
Zucchini, Eggplant and other squashes
Tomatoes
PeasCukes
Pumpkins
Some herbs
Look around your yard for other planting spots. Do you have a fence or trellis that gets lots of straight sun every day? Perfect place to plant peas. Peas are very forgiving, they are easy to grow and harvest. Mine grow up the trellis on the deck and on the fence in the courtyard.
HERBS
You can plant herbs with your other foods. Stay tuned for more information about planting herbs.
