Room to Grow

My existing lower garden is wonderful for lettuce and peas and

greens, items that will tolerate partial shade, but I  can't grow the 

sun lovers down there.

  I learned this after my first year

of 15 rotten tomato vines and sogged out onions

So, last Spring I took out all the flowers in the beds on the back side of Lily's

so that I would have some seriously sunny space to play 

By Fall I knew I wanted to create some more beds and really 

see if I can grow some of the food that I both eat and serve

I just love the idea of making you a salad from greens out of the

back 40 with no GMO's in sight! 

But, the only other open sunny space available is on my leach field

When I was informed that raised beds would be fine, and

the fence had to be free standing so nothing was puncturing the surface

I set to work

After watching a few YouTube videos I decided the easiest thing

was to order 8' lengths of 2 x 10 boards and 

screw them together into boxes - no saw cutting etc.

I did this myself with the help of Renee's awesome screw gun

and these honking screws she likes to use

Totally not wanting to have grass coming up inside, I covered

the bottoms with three layers of this organic weed guard paper to smother

the situation

Excavator Timmy came with a truck load of loam 

and filled the boxes for me with his back hoe

I then added some composts and turned it all in

TA DA!

Now for the tricky part, the free standing fence -

Enter my very talented partner Renee

After limbing up all the spruce trees around the property

we used the trunks as supportive archways to hold the fence in place

They are attached to the fence and the raised beds

Again, not wanting anything to do with grass, I lined the paths

with more weed guard and spread a 9" layer of straw all the 

way around.  I also have some straw left over to use as

mulch on the beds, a la Ruth Stout

Come on in,

 I realize that it is my version of that peaceful

barn with the goats that I talked about

No animals (I hope),

 but hopefully those healthy seedlings inside will be very happy here

Enjoy these days!

Kyra