I just moved into my new house and am looking to make a vegetable garden in my back yard. It's a fair size lot but all grass with shubbery around the fenceline. I'm thinking of putting in two 12' by 4' rows to create my vegetable garden.
I'm unsure of the best way to make the garden though.
Do I remove the grass and till the dirt underneath, or do I just till the grass and dirt and everything?
I'm thinking of building a frame around the beds and adding some top soil as well as the soil here has alot of clay in it. (winnipeg, mb)
For creating the boxes, I'm thinking of adding 4-6 inches of dirt on top of the ground to allow for adequate depth. Is there a suggested type of wood? Treated or non? Cedar or no? Cheaper is preferable.
And then there's this: the March 1981 issue of Organic Gardening, an article titled: Tossing an 'Instant Garden', by Jamie Jobb, Page 75, talking about exactly what you're proposing to do. Trip to the library, my friend.
I used the lazy gal's method this spring --
(1) Marked off the area with string,
(2) thoroughly watered,
(3) without bothering to remove or otherwise doing anything to the grass, tossed mixture of half-finished compost, manure, lime, rock phosphate, and greensand on the area,
(4) covered the entire area with cardboard/4~5 layers of newsprint paper,
(5) built a raised bed frame, overlapping the edge of cardboard/paper
(6) filled the bed with mixture of topsoil, bagged compost, and mushroom compost
(7) 1~2 weeks later, planted transplants and seeds, cutting through the paper layer as necessary. (they say you should wait a month, but what the heck -- the grass was mostly dead and earthworms were already everywhere under the paper layer)
** I used the square-foot intensive planting method too**
I did have to supplement with side dressings of compost and compost tea during the season when the paper layer started tying up the nitrogen, but
Since you're planning it now, you can let the area "mellow out" and "mature" The trick with this system is not to dig up the seed bank of weed seeds by tilling/cultivating. You might want to sow a winter covercrop or finish off with a good layer of much -- good choices are chopped leaves or straw.
I've since learned that it's better to "fork" the area first -- just stick the garden fork in and wiggle without actually digging up. It helps the microbes to get deeper down into the soil. But really, when I cleared up the corn and sunflower stalks in some of those beds to plant fruit trees this fall, the soil in the area was dark and fluffy to 1 1/2 fork depth -- I assume the corn and sunflower roots did all the digging for me already.
Since it sounds like your planning to prep now, you could layer/compost chopped leaves and grass clippings and other fall goodies in there too, and not have to spend so much on bagged stuff.
Thanks for all the advice, I have a much better idea of what to do now. That square foot gardening concept seems really cool. I'm going to take a mix of ideas and create my garden.
I'm going to build 3 4'x12' beds with 2x10 sides and a square foot grid (not sure what I'll use for wood yet for these). I'll put newspaper/cardboard on the existing grass inside of the bed frames and then put my soil mix on top. I'm still torn on the soil mix, but will continue to research it. There are lots of bags of leaves in my back lane that I'll pickup before garbage day that should go well in there.
So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully I get it all done this weekend so it is ready for the coming snow in a few weeks.
Thanks again for all your help, and I'm sure you'll see me around more.
Last weekend I bought the materials and built my first bed. It's 12'x4'x1'. I used 8 2x6x8's and some corner brackets and straight brackets and screwed it all together. I couldn't find any hemlock, and cedar was a little pricey. These 2x6x8's were only $3.50/ea. I put a couple of layers of cardboard on the bottom (of which I have LOTS since I just moved) and then put a layer of leaf/grass clippings that I snagged from my neighbor's garbage. Cost me about $70 for the single bed including wood and all the hardware, which isn't so bad. I was going to build 3, but I'll have to wait until next year for the next 2 (moving is expensive ).
Now for the soil... I'm still unsure of a mix since I have no compost going at home yet and no truck so it's going to be kind of pricey. I might wait until the spring to add the soil, and just let the leaves and cardboard do their work until then. Or would it be advisable to add the soil now to allow it to do its business over the winter?
I'd look into getting some soil delivered. Look in your new phonebook under topsoil or similar. Some areas will deliver you a whole truckload or a prebaged quantity (about 1 cubic yard) and it's way cheaper than buying it by the bagful at the garden center. Since it'll be real topsoil there's no need for it to rest, so you can wait until early spring.
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