New Garden, Who Diss?
We bought our house 12 years ago, and our backyard was filled with concrete and a giant pool. It lasted one year before we had it filled in because it was a pool, and we live in Maine. Our entire property is only .15 of an acre, and we've always wanted it to be a garden.
You can see on this blog a few of the things we've tried with some success. Our first gardens were raised bed square foot gardens with the fluffiest soil we could put together. They looked cute, and they did alright. Those morphed as the wood we used to build the raised beds decayed like they were supposed to.
For the past five years, we have had one long raised bed in the back yard. The first year it was full of vegetables, and it was insanely full. The following year we did the same, but weeds took over, and we ignored it. The next year we changed the raised bed into an herb garden, and it was perfect. We grew tomatoes in pots around the driveway and back porch, and the raised bed was full of mints, flowers, and herbs.
This year we are trying something different. We have known that a lawn is wasteful. That the space in the middle of our tiny yard could be used for more than a place for our giant dog to flop and roll around on. More than a place where our daughter two or three times a summer to hit a tennis ball around on. Our lawn was basically like our pool. Something we spent every weekend maintaining but barely using.
We measured out how much of our lawn gets the sun during the year and settled on that space—nineteen by eighteen feet in the middle of our backyard. We ordered the composted soil garden mixture from our local green house, and yesterday set to hand tilling the entire chunk of lawn, then covering it with a mix of ashes and our compost. Some of it was more composted than other bits.
Now it sits, almost a square waiting for our garden soil delivery. We are taking our square raised beds to the next level.
Then our next step is to decide what we are going to plant and when.
You can see on this blog a few of the things we've tried with some success. Our first gardens were raised bed square foot gardens with the fluffiest soil we could put together. They looked cute, and they did alright. Those morphed as the wood we used to build the raised beds decayed like they were supposed to.
For the past five years, we have had one long raised bed in the back yard. The first year it was full of vegetables, and it was insanely full. The following year we did the same, but weeds took over, and we ignored it. The next year we changed the raised bed into an herb garden, and it was perfect. We grew tomatoes in pots around the driveway and back porch, and the raised bed was full of mints, flowers, and herbs.
This year we are trying something different. We have known that a lawn is wasteful. That the space in the middle of our tiny yard could be used for more than a place for our giant dog to flop and roll around on. More than a place where our daughter two or three times a summer to hit a tennis ball around on. Our lawn was basically like our pool. Something we spent every weekend maintaining but barely using.
We measured out how much of our lawn gets the sun during the year and settled on that space—nineteen by eighteen feet in the middle of our backyard. We ordered the composted soil garden mixture from our local green house, and yesterday set to hand tilling the entire chunk of lawn, then covering it with a mix of ashes and our compost. Some of it was more composted than other bits.
Now it sits, almost a square waiting for our garden soil delivery. We are taking our square raised beds to the next level.
Then our next step is to decide what we are going to plant and when.
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