Breaking Ground

First post to all you gardeners in blog world. The most exciting parts of gardening are the first shovel of dirt you turn and the first seeds that you see break the surface. Seeing as the Midwest appears to be due for an early spring this year we have caught the spring bug and are anxious to get into the garden again. No doubt the snow will be back soon but lets fantasize about the garden while we can.

My name is Jake and I may not be the seasoned veteran of the produce section but in my current employment of small town botany, I have a moderate understanding in most things green. Donnie and I both love growing things inside and outside the house so we are going to pass on as much of our adventures as we can for your enjoyment and instruction. for this post all I have is words but future entries will include pictures graphs to let you all know what kind of dirt we are getting our hands into.

Get your shovels ready, we are digging in!

Building raised beds.

A few years ago, after my wife and I bought our first home I built some raised beds and they worked wonderfully. I have since moved and needed to build new beds. I will walk you through the fairly easy process of building them.

First things first, you have chosen where you would like to plant. Now to need decide how you want to lay your beds out. The area I am working with is 43ft x 8ft. 

The original layout of my garden space consisted of 3 beds 4x4 in size. I wanted a much bigger garden and decided to make much better use of the area.

 

These beds were surround by rubber mulch.

I took all of the rubber mulch out and laid it aside for future use.

Rubber mulch on top of weed-stop liners.

After removing all of the rubber mulch and carefully placing it for reuse. I started building my beds.

I will be building beds 2ft x 8ft x 6inches.

I am fortunate enough in the backyard to have a dedicated water spout for my garden. :)

I always build a "floor plan" for my beds so I know exactly what I need when I go to the lumber store. Here is my bed layout.

 

When building my beds I bought 2x6x10 so that I could cut 2 feet off and use that as an end piece.

After I had all of my wood cut to the appropriate sizes it was time to assemble the beds using 2-1/2 inch gold screws. It is highly recommended to use untreated wood. It is likely the chemicals from the treated wood can seep into the garden soil and into the plants.

Several finished beds stacked on top of each other.

After I had built all my beds and placed them where I wanted them, I reused the weed-stop lining and the rubber mulch to create a nice decorate look around my beds. When placing the weed-stop lining I went around beds so the plants can grow a nice, healthy and deep root system.

Next I placed everything where I wanted. I filled my beds with a mulch, soil mixture.

Bags of mulch and soil before placing.

After ensuring the weed-stop was covering everywhere I wanted, it was time to keep it in place. Using lawn staples I placed them in every corner of every piece. 

Next it was time to take the rubber mulch and start laying back around the beds.

Placing the rubber mulch.

 

All done!! 

Once I was done with everything I set up my own drip-irrigation system using 1/2 inch PVC pipe, various PVC adapters and soaker hoses.

Getting started

This has been a work in progress for a couple of years now. I would like to thank you for visiting my blog. If you find this to be of any help to you, I encourage you to pass it along.

The idea originally started a few years ago when I was getting ready to start my own garden. Growing up my parents always had a garden, growing a variety of foods. Naturally when I got older I wanted to start a garden of my own. When my wife and I bought our first home, we did not have a lot of space to grow. I did a lot of research and struggled to find information.One day I came across and article about square foot gardening, opening a whole new world. The hope here is to compile the best of the information I have found and personally tested.

First, a few things to take in to account;

• Where do you want to place your garden? Avoid planting too close to the house or near a tree.
• Does the location you have chosen get enough sun? Your veggies LOVE the sun. You should plan an area that gets at least 6 hours of sun per day.
• Are you going to plant a tradition style garden or build some raised beds. (I have chosen to build raised beds and that is what we will talk about.)
• When is your local frost date? In South East Idaho where I live it is the middle of May.

After all of this has been considered, its now time to decide what you want to plant. (We will talk more about this later.)