Putting Gardens to Bed

With the change of each season there is a new set of tasks and jobs and projects that arises. Shortly before the frost hit my girlfriend and I filled out pockets with paper bags and with a pencil behind my ear we wandered through her yard gathering seeds that will be planted next spring. I’ve come home on more than one occasion now carefully clutching a handful of seeds that I knocked off a flower head while walking the streets of my neighborhood.

Having recently moved into a home that I plan on spending the next decade in I would like to get a head start on whatever I can in regard to the gardens for the coming spring. I’ve been talking to people who garden and filling my head with all the sorts of tasks that I can do now before the ground freezes so that I will be better prepared to get my garden growing next year.

Next up: Raised beds.

It turns out that building and preparing a raised bed is a perfect fall activity. Building them now and filling them with earth, leaves, compost, manure and/or straw will give the soil lots of time to settle before I try to plant things in them in the spring. Fortunately I have a stockpile of wood neatly stacked along one of my fences that I have recently taken an interest in. In particular the 12′ x 36′ cedar boards that I have now decided will be what I use to build my raised garden beds.

There is 15 yards of gravel coming to my house later this week. The gravel will become what my beds sit on. The entire area will be gravelled so that I don’t have to deal with weeds and to provide good drainage for my boxes.

I’ve screwed together 6 3ftx6ft  frames that will become my beds. Each of them is held together at the corners with a wedge of 2×4 (also from the scrap pile) that has it’s pointy part sticking down. The idea is that they will serve as little stakes that keep the beds in place and provide the boards with some support. I guess. I don’t know I just read this all on the internet and copied what people told me to do. I’ll keep you posted about how they hold up.

Next project… indoor winter greens…