Raise the bed...

So even on my days off I work. I go to work and I garden, sew, cook, clean and bake. I come home I garden, sew, cook, bake, knit, tat, spin and well you get the picture. Now on a recent trip to my parents’ house I borrowed some very useful tools. You see when you buy a house you don’t realize what you will need until well you need them and one of the tools I found I needed was a saw. Luckily I knew my dad would have one I could borrow for a bit. Now why did I need a saw? Well when the previous owners moved out of the house they left some things behind. One of them was a wrought iron bench with wooden slats for the seats. Now it wasn't sturdy and the wood was in pretty rough shape and wouldn't hold anything over 50 pounds without breaking so in a fit of brilliance and Yankee ingenuity I decided to reuse.

My tools and work space and the bench that was about to become a bed.

A few weeks ago I tried to take it apart with a screw driver and wrench but the screws were so rusted it wasn't having any of what I had in mind so on my next trip home I asked for the saw. The next chance I got I pulled it out and I cut those boards free. I then measured and cut and placed and before I knew it, Volia! In a corner of my yard I now have a small garden bed.

Garden bed as I added soil and plants.

Raised garden beds are both historical and useful. Now laying out a garden bed is always recommended, plan were you want to place your plants and write it down so next year you know where you planted what and you can plant something different there next year. Rotating what you plant where not only helps keep your soil fertile but also helps you see what grows best where. Now depending on the soil you already have you may not need to make a raised bed. If your soil is good just till the ground and get to work but if you have acidic or sandy soil you don’t want to plant directly into your soil. This is where raised beds come in handy. There are different types of raised beds too. There are bordered ones like the wooden one I made, rock ones or you could use modern things like metal or fiber glass. I recently found directions on Pinterest that had them made out of pallets that I am going to try for the back corner of my yard. You can also do market beds which is a raised bed without a border.

To make a raised bed first you make your border. Since I used wood, I did length wise the length of what the bench had been and width was half of the bench length. I made it three slats high so I only had to cut three in half. I also needed stakes so I cut one of my boards in quarters, cut a three inch diagonal onto one end and then hammered it into the ground on where the boards met on the length wise and half way on the width wise. I tore up the ground a bit inside. Then I lined the bottom with newspapers. This not only will kill the grass underneath but also help hold the good soil in until it can blend together.  Finally fill it with soil and plant your garden. In this bed there is asparagus, chives, lettuce, spinach, and collards.

So here is to our gardens. May they be fruitful and well kept.

Note on asparagus, if you chose to have this in your garden, you must wait three years before harvesting. Once you do get some coming back every year do not harvest all of them let some seed every year.