The pile of shipping pallets near the edge of our woods is no longer. In its place: a tidy, raised-bed garden surrounded by a five-foot fence. When we ran out of pallet boards, we stained a few leftover 2x4s and some furring strips to (sort of) match the weathered wood. It took one and a half rolls of metal fencing to enclose space, and we had help with that one day when Bill's brother Pat stopped by and volunteered an extra pair of hands.
The beds are high, so filling them was no easy task. Inside the four beds we mixed native soil (being excavated for a deck project), a year's worth of our own compost, a pile of semi-composted leaves and grass, leftover play sand, 25 bags of store-bought soil, two bags of a compost/manure blend, three big bags of perlite (to help create air pockets) and all the worms we could find.
Maybe next year we'll have time to start seeds indoors. This year, we have lettuce, carrots and radishes growing from seed. All the other plants came from garden shops: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers (sweet red, green bell and hot Tabasco), strawberries, cilantro, basil, oregano, rosemary and mint so far. We added a couple vegetable-companion flowers (marigolds and bee balm are planted; petunias are planned) and mulched it all. In addition to the beds, we planted the containers from last year's mini-garden. Voilà, we have a garden.
Though this two-week garden project has delayed our tiny house build, it's such an important part of what we're trying to do here on the mountain that the construction delay is merited. Learning to grow some of our food takes us one big step closer to a more sustainable way-of-life.
The beds are high, so filling them was no easy task. Inside the four beds we mixed native soil (being excavated for a deck project), a year's worth of our own compost, a pile of semi-composted leaves and grass, leftover play sand, 25 bags of store-bought soil, two bags of a compost/manure blend, three big bags of perlite (to help create air pockets) and all the worms we could find.
Maybe next year we'll have time to start seeds indoors. This year, we have lettuce, carrots and radishes growing from seed. All the other plants came from garden shops: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers (sweet red, green bell and hot Tabasco), strawberries, cilantro, basil, oregano, rosemary and mint so far. We added a couple vegetable-companion flowers (marigolds and bee balm are planted; petunias are planned) and mulched it all. In addition to the beds, we planted the containers from last year's mini-garden. Voilà, we have a garden.
Though this two-week garden project has delayed our tiny house build, it's such an important part of what we're trying to do here on the mountain that the construction delay is merited. Learning to grow some of our food takes us one big step closer to a more sustainable way-of-life.