Our New Garden

I had to do some convincing to get Jimmy excited or at least accept my ideas for the new garden. He always says it’s a LOT of work, time and money. Our old garden was somewhat neglected last year so there were tons of weeds this year. We began the yearly task of tilling and weeding it. Then the weather turned on us and it snowed and iced for about a week. I was desperate to get started.

During my wait for the weather to warm up, I came across the concept of “Square Foot Gardening” on the net. I was skeptical about the idea because my experience with gardening in a “container” has not always been good. Generally, I have not been able to grow anything except for flowers and herbs in a container. A couple of weeks later, the Relief Society at my church had a class on Square Foot Gardening. I didn’t go to the class but I got the handout and did some more research. I found tons of people who used raised garden beds. Basically, the benefits of raised garden beds are virtually no weeds and you don’t use the soil in your yard thus eliminating the need to figure out if anything will grow in it. On the Square Foot Gardening website, they recommended a special mix for the soil but it is very expensive to buy all the materials. If you would like to find out more about it, just check out their website.

The only affordable option for us was to use a mix of topsoil and compost. We are very fortunately to have a friend who owns a landscaping business that can help get the materials. At first, we built the 8’X8’, then added the 5’X8’ and 4’X5’. Here’s what the new garden looked like in mid-June. As you can see, we didn't put down the edging yet and the small bed was not built yet.