Garden Design

Joy, oh joy it's really almost here: Gardening Time! This year, it's also garden designing time as well. Every year, about the end of January, I get the gardener's itch to start planning and preparing for the seasons bounty. I dig through the catalogs, which interestingly enough, come at just the right time! This year though, instead of a few, smaller raised beds for our family, we're going to step out a little and go for the College Fund Farm.

Yep, the boys are so excited and have been asking on their own about gardening, that we are going to let them set up one of the long beds for themselves. To sell on their own and save some money for their future...college funds hopefully.

This is the area where we are going to start with our new garden design ... it will have a total of 3 or 4, 4' wide by 40' long, slightly raised beds. It will also be the area that we will put in a few dwarf fruit trees as well as our vertical garden are for the strawberries (and who knows what else).

We've already started by using the tractor to scrape the grass and weeds, but before we put down one shovel full of dirt, we'll also put down some of our leftover newspapers to help kill off everything in the most natural way we can. We found the prior owners manure pile, which has been sitting for at least a couple years, and is perfectly rotted. Yes, there will be weeds, but easy enough to control as they start out.

Is the spring garden bug getting to you yet? How are you preparing for your garden? And remember - a garden can be anything large, but most assuredly, it can also be a few pots on your patio! Don't think you don't have room. Go for it!