have a larger backyard for an in-town house. However, we’ve started to plant perennial herbs as “landscaping” to maximize our garden space and still have fresh herbs on hand! ((We currently have lavender, mint, oregano, and chives planted in the beds that surround our deck. Super heavenly smelling, and easy to grab when prepping for dinner))
Spinach
(to come), Swiss Chard & Kale on the left; Tomatoes on the right;
real life gardening with kids in the middle – hello pink princess garden
shovel!
Why Raised Beds?
We currently have 4 raised beds. When we first started a garden downstate, we didn’t opt for raised beds and it was a weeding disaster! We were weeding that bad boy all.the.time. Same was true of our first garden up here (although it was a little better when we brought some dirt in). The other advantage to raised beds is that you initially have to bring in great black dirt and compost (we opt for a hefty scoop of old manure from a girlfriend’s horse farm) to mix into the beds. This ensures you have great soil to plant it and you avoid really sandy soil, clay, or situations that are too high in minerals (although we really know NOTHING about that last one, which is why we opted to get black dirt from our transfer station for about $20 per truck bed load). While the dirt might seem expensive right off the bat, once you have them filled you really don’t have to bring in that much more dirt. We probably opt for a bed or half a bed load every year, but our beds are getting deeper and pretty close to the point where we don’t need anymore.
While I can’t give you the building plans for our beds (but Jon can, if you want them!), we lucked out as my brother and sister-in-law were tearing down their deck and had some leftover old wood that we quickly scooped up and recycled into our beds. A few things we know now: you probably don’t want to stain them (like we did). We feel like not much of the stain leaches into the soil (and really the veggies are probably better than whatever chemicals/pesticides that get put on commercial veggies), but if we did it again we’d skip that step. Also, you may want to line the bottom of your beds with a weed block/black plastic to keep any weeds that might try to creep up out of there.
Sidenote: We don’t have raised beds for our raspberries or for the zucchini and cucumbers. We’ve discovered that with a little extra black dirt and hydration, these guys are just fine without them! Plus, weeding the raspberries just doesn’t happen all that often
If you’re thinking about starting a garden or expanding on one you already have, stay tuned! I have some more posts in the works about when to plant, what to plant, and how to harvest/preserve what you get! Plus a few tips about our favorite gardening books and what we’ve learned after 6 years of gardening!
