10 Boxes To Start

Well here we go. My new raised beds for a garden are finished and placed. Each one is 2 foot wide and 8 foot long. They are constructed by O Wise One with local lumber purchased from the sawmill down the road and cut from this mountain. They are two foot wide because  I wanted  beds that I could reach easily across. Most are 10 inches tall. They will be left natural wood with no paints or preservatives. In the bottom are our cardboard moving boxes and packing paper from the move. Next are layers  of stick from the yard that fell with that February ice storm. Next are layers of leaves from the yard, grass clippings, peat moss, sheet rock torn from the house during a bathroom update with the paper removed and soaked in water(gypsum), and rabbit manure. Eventually the beds will be filled on top with mushroom compost from a local supplier. Kind of a Hugelkultur meets lasagna gardening approach.  I have no idea how this will work but should be a great start to a small garden as well as a useful way to dispose of yard waste and moving materials. Eventually we may actually prepare a small garden spot but for now this will give us someplace to plant a few veggies for summer eating and I will can any extras. We have so many other things to do that it is nice to get this one thing out of the way and move on to building a clothes line and a chicken coop.We also want to repair and upgrade the perimeter fence this summer so as you can see this first season will be a busy one. No major construction just lots of little repairs and updates.

The boxes are in the northeast corner of my yard away from all trees. I can plainly see them from my deck. Eventually we may put a small fence around that corner of the yard to keep the dogs and chickens out. For now we will just observe how things unfold.

We have lots of compost in rings that will eventually go into these beds as time goes on and they need it. We compost newspapers, food scraps from the kitchen and yard waste on a regular basis. 

As we trim trees from the recent ice storm  we are burning the wood and the ashes are also going into the beds in small amounts and the compost piles as well. 

Everything added so far is even local except the mushroom compost and the sheet rock. O Wise One is hoping to try his hand at vermiculture (worm farming) in the future which should also contribute to some nice worm castings for the gardens as well as fishing bait : ) We are making progress. Most importantly we are observing right now. Observing the weather patterns for our new home, where the sun is the brightest and little things that can so affect a garden but go unnoticed. Frost pockets and wind directions and where water stands on the property. Where the topsoil is the rockiest and where the top soil is the thickest. And most of all what our neighbors are growing is a great way to figure out what grows well here, when to plant and what to expect from this new climate. 

We still have to decide on where to put a small asparagus bed and maybe a little rhubarb patch. Maybe some fruit trees but dwarf so that we don't  have to climb ladders to prune and maintain. Blackberries and grapes as well. Not as many as on the farm but a few would be nice. We constantly have to reminds ourselves to keep everything small. The object is to scale back to allow time for other stuff as well.

So life goes on and we settle in to make our little acre as productive as possible, supplement our diet, provide us with exercise and activity into our golden years. We should be able to have the same things we did on the much larger farm but just on a smaller scale with much less upkeep. Fortunately our full freezers and jars of produce that we moved from the  farm will tide us over while we plan, lay out and prepare our new gardens and get started.

For those of you my neighbors please feel free to help us out and share what grows well in our area and on your own farms and back yards. Recommendations for flowers and shrubs as well as vegetables and fruits that do well in this area are greatly appreciated and we never get too many suggestions for anyone in the area that would like to contribute.  

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter