The (Future) Country Garden

Well, it doesn’t look like a garden yet but I have a vision and big plans!

Recently, we had some friends that got married on our property. They had the ceremony in the ‘back yard’, between the house & the water. The reception was held on the deck mentioned in the last post. Regardless, the wedding was pretty, very rustic & the seating they used was straw bales.

Well, seeing all those bales sitting in my back yard gave me an idea that I had been tossing around for a while. Since I will be a bit older when I retire (3 years 13 days & counting) & don’t want to have to plow/till huge areas for vegetables (I also didn’t want to wait until I actually retire to start preparing the garden area). I decided that I would put in permanent beds using the ‘lasagna layering’ method combined with a little “Back to Eden” method, along w/a couple of huglekulture(sp?) beds.

The wedding party had left us 20 bales so we got started a few weekends ago. We hadn’t completely made up our minds about what to frame the beds with, but we decided to go ahead & lay out the general location & ‘start’ some beds since the bales were starting to break down.

Materials:

Leaves - We have access to landscapers here in the city & they have been bringing us bagged leaves.

Cardboard - Husband has been saving cardboard from his business.
Newspapers - My co-workers have been bringing me newspapers.
Manure - One of my cousins has horses.
Strawbales – Leftover from the wedding.

The general area of the garden is ‘down’ by the water but it’s on one of the slight slopes & nothing to protect the layers from blowing away. So, we decided to go at this a bit backward.

I originally wanted to put newspaper down, then cardboard, then a mixture of leaves, straw & horse manure but with the last three items being dry & light, they would have mostly likely blown away in the first strong winds. So we mixed the order up.

We tilled up the ground in an approximate size area of the final 10 x 3.5 bed. Then put down a couple shovels of horse manure, then leaves, then a few layers of wet newspaper, then large pieces of cardboard & finally the straw and slices of wood (used to hold down tablecloths during the reception) on top to hold everything down. Sorry for the bad pics, they were taken at the wrong time of day.

Over the course of two weekends, we got 10 beds laid down. We had plans of getting 10 more done over Memorial Weekend but it was windy as all get out & shoveling dry manure & trying to wrestle large sheets of cardboard & wet newspaper didn’t sound like all that much fun, so we abandoned that idea.  

Plus, we were out of bales & had bought a roll of straw to use instead. While we were standing down by the ‘garden’ contemplating what to do, we realized that the roll of hay wasn’t wound tightly & that it would break completely apart, instead of in ‘chunks’ & not allow us to use as a weight.

So, we had to change our plans (big surprise!). We have decided to use concrete blocks to frame the beds & will go ahead & purchase some. That way we’ll be able to till, then go back to the original plans of newspaper 1st, cardboard next, etc. Wet it all real well & hopefully the block sides will keep everything intact.

Going to have 20+ beds of concrete block, a few out of leftover City House brick & at least 2 longer ones w/the huglekulture and maybe a few potato bins along the way.

Will try to figure out how to get a drawing put on here so I'll remember what my original plan was.