2010 Gardening

Welcome to my little garden!

Its March already and I think its the perfect time to transform my small backyard into a food producing oasis in the desert. I have wanted a proper vegetable garden for so long. This year I convinced my husband to participate by introducing the possibility of using POWER TOOLS to build a raised garden. Worked like a charm! I could see his blue eyes sparkle in anticipation.

So, I set off on a journey to my local Lowe's and found a book called "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. I purchased the book because it had great photos showing the building of a raised garden, but as I read, I realized Mr. Bartholomew has a whole methodology for gardening in small spaces that seems do-able for a novice like myself. It involves a magic mix of compost based soil and a grid system in one square foot increments. Since I am not a seasoned gardener and my closest gardening adviser (and grandmother) lives a couple thousand miles away in Virginia, I am following this book in my first year of gardening. I can't vouch for the gardening techniques in this book yet, but it is a great resource for building a raised garden.

With book in hand, and a husband with an trigger finger itching to power up a drill, we purchased the supplies for our first raised garden. We grabbed the kids, a tarp, a shovel and the POWER TOOLS and set to work. We built the 12'x4' garden and mixed our soil in less than 6 hours. We had the kids helping and dogs getting in the way so it took us a while, but if you are used to building things and have no distractions, it would probably take much less time.


Here's what our small-space garden looks like...

We decided to build it to a height of 12 inches instead of 6 inches to discourage the flower-sniffing Corgi from trampling the crops. She can still jump in, but the increase in height seems to keep her out.

So begins this backyard adventure....Stay tuned!