So the first step towards long term food freedom is complete. Today with the help of my lovely wife we put together two very simple 8'x4' raised garden beds. They are simple things that will hopefully make dinners much better going forward. We have four acres of nothing but compact, very hard clay dirt. Now i'm not talking about mostly clay, or even that nice red clay you find through most of the south, i'm talking about clay that you could make pots out of. Clay that breaks tools and injures backs when you try to dig it.
That being said, we decided that to be able to get something in the ground as soon as possible, raised garden beds were our best option. Here it is middle of June in middle TN and it is HOT, but we moved full steem ahead (see what I did there, ha) and got these done. With a simple trip to the hardware store we picked up 12 2x6x8's, 1 1x1x8, a roll of chicken wire, 28 cubic feet of top soil and 12 cubic feet of hardwood bark mulch. Now I know any long term gardeners out there are probably closing out this blog right after they read "top soil". I also know it is not the best growing soil for a garden but it was what I could afford and it will be a lot cheaper for me to add home made compost than to buy the good stuff. It was $1.50 per 2 cu ft bag of top soil vs $7-$8 per bag of compost and or "garden soil".
As for building the boxes, that was pretty simple. We cut 4 of the 2x6x8s in half and cut the 1x1x8 into 8, 1ft long pieces. With a couple wood screws we put it all together in an hour or so giving us a roughly 4'Wx8'Lx1'H garden bed. Now I know it is slightly smaller because the wood isn't true dimensions, but that worked out nicely because the 1' long 1x1s were a little longer than the walls so I put the extra inch and a half in the dirt to help anchor the boxes in the ground. After putting it all together we stapled the chicken wire to the bottom to keep out digging critters and drilled two holes on the down hill side of the bottom 8ft long boards to help with drainage. Don't forget these sit on top of clay that absorbs ZERO water.
After filling the boxes with the dirt and topping with mulch to help retain moisture we planted a few seeds in one box using the square foot garden method. Since we are so late in the season we went with a couple different items and are just hoping we get something, anything. We planted some corn, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honey dew, onions, carrots, and beans. I will let you know how it goes.
In addition to starting the garden I ordered some red wriggler worms to get started with a compost bucket. I need something to help amend this top soil and seeing as we eat a lot of fruits and veggies we should have plenty of scraps to feed the little worms and get some quality worm castings to feed the garden. In my next post I'll take you through what I do to set up the worm bucket when they arrive. Until the next post, keep building, keep growing, and keep loving from the ground up.
Love my worms, hi from Australia and of course following, new here myself.