The Garden!

We finally have the beginnings of a proper garden in place. We were waiting on a big water oak to come out, and it has, so today I looked at the area we have available and settled on a plan. The total space amounts to a rectangle that's 16 x 12 (with options for a couple more small beds outside this). Eventually there will be 6 raised beds that are 3' x 7' with paths of 18" between. The dimensions are the result of the total area and practicality. I could have done fewer and larger beds, but working them would be a problem without stepping into them, which we don't want to do. Three feet is easy to work with from both sides, and is probably more than enough space for just two people to grow veggies to augment our grocery shopping. Today I got in one of the beds and marked off and prepared the soil for the second. I used available materials for the borders of the beds (cedar beams that were laying around and leftovers from the herb garden border) and 5 bags of gardening soil to fill in. All of the beds will be mulched with pine needles. I'm not sure what we'll mulch the paths with. Pea gravel would be nice, but once it's in, it's a pain to take out. I think we'll be able to mulch and plant it this weekend. It actually works out nicely to stagger them, both financially and from a planting point of view. If we can plant a bed every two weeks we should be eating well all winter, right from the garden, and we'll be totally set up for spring to do heavy plantings of peppers, tomatoes, cukes, and miscellaneous other veggies. In the meantime, arugula, here we come.