How Does Your Garden Grow?

At last!  A moment to pull together all the photos and document the building of our raised vegetable garden beds.  It's been a fun little project, and we're already seeing the benefits of choosing to make this change.

I started researching raised beds online. Doing so taught me the following (and much more!):

• You need a 40/60 mix of compost and black earth to get a rich enough soil
• Placing corrugate and a good layer of wet newspapers down before adding soil will prevent weeds from growing, and will eventually provide a nutrient rich layer for the plant roots to grow through
• The soil in raised beds warms sooner, allowing you to get first seedlings in earlier than you would if you were planting directly into the ground which in turn allows you a longer growing season.
• You can plant crops somewhat more densely than in a regular garden; raised gardens don't require the same space between rows.
• Soil compaction can reduce crop yields by 50%
  

At this point I was pretty much sold.  Now came the job of deciding whether it was fiscally reasonable.  I did the math on how much lumber we might need to build the beds, if we chose to go with lumber.  Turns out, a girl at work had bricks in her back yard she had no intention of using, and generously dropped these off for free in our back yard.  There went that line on the garden budget.

Next was the question of compost.  Since we don't compost at home, I couldn't use that.  Another friend told me about a compost giveaway through the city each summer, so I hauled my sister with me and came away with 50 gallons of compost for $10.

Next: soil.  We would need more.  It wasn't convenient to get a yard of dirt (although in hindsight, we likely would have used most of it).  I tried to think of some other way to get cheap black earth.  Bags at the grocery store (for reference) were $2.

So I went online and used my few Airmiles to get a Rona gift card.  The gift card covered the bulk of the soil requirements (since we happened on a day when black earth bags were only $1).  We also picked up some mulch to tame the weeds around beds, some stakes to hold the bricks up, and $13 in seeds.

All in all, I think this project cost us about $40 out of pocket, and I'm already reaping the benefits.  The cardboard and newspaper have certainly done the trick on the weeds!

There's a very good chance I completely overdid it on the radishes! Ah well... fresh produce is always something coworkers and friends love to receive!

And now, for some pictorial happiness: