Sunday, December 26, 2010

New garden bed

It doesn't look like much here, but this hole is the start of a new, small garden bed. It measures ten feet by eight feet, and I've dug out a cubic yard of sandy soil--roughly the top foot of "soil." I'll back my truck up to it, and fill the bed to the top with mushroom compost. The area gets a lot of sun in the spring and summer, but this time of the year it's shaded out by my house and the large live oaks in the front yard. It will give me some space for rotating crops from season to season.

I've got a bunch of cabbages, collards, and broccoli ready to plant, once I get the bed finished.

3 comments:

Shawna Lee Coronado said...

Congrats on your P.Allen Smith Garden Award - very cool!

Unknown said...

Are you switching to "Christine's method"? Are you giving up on growing veggies in thick mulch?

I'm hardly gardening at all right now (just some mache for salads this winter), but I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it when (if)I get back to it. I've been seriously considering a version of your mulch method--growing veggies in a thick blanket of mulch. So your post makes me wonder: is there a downside to growing veggies in mulch? Why are you switching to this method?

Bill

Michael said...

bill--right now in my old bed i'm trying a variation on what you used to day--piling the compost up into mounds and planting in it. it's worked very well. in this new bed--i decided to dig it out more because i needed 15 barrows of sand for a base to an addition of the shed.i still think the mulch method works well, it's just that i'm a bit short on mulch right now!