Start a Garden NOW!

At least, that is what I need to do if I am going to make the jump out of herbs in pots to some real food of my very own.

Step 1. Choose a Spot. In this case it is a nice chunk of land with ideal SW exposure. Since this was part of the housing packag

e we didn't appreciate before. I though I might as well claim it now that it matters.

Step 2. Stake it out and live with it for awhile. Check for walk around space. I had to move my stakes out from the wall a few times, and away from the deck. Changing my mind now was easy.

Step 3. Too late to turn back now. This is when changing my mind got hard. I have a hole in my yard.

Step 4. Now, like I mean it. Did you know that I have good soil only about 1.5 inches down?! I do now. A trunk full of reclaimed cinder blocks, and another of imported soil and organic material is part of changing that. First I dug down, added compost to the sand I found there (the good news is I won't have anything growing under my garden that I have to block out). Now that I have down taken care of, I am working on up.

Step 5. The bare bones. This took me 2 weekends, and only really a few hours on 3 days. I was surprised. It makes the hours of weed pulling seem especially frustrating. Look what I could have built with that time. To that end, weed cloth will soon be joining this dirt, so I can mostly grow what I want, and reduce the interlopers. Stay tuned for the adventures of seeds. My son picked out rainbow carrots.