From the Archives

The Slacker Method for Making a Raised Bed

All of our vegetables here are grown in raised beds. This is mostly due to clay soil, tree roots, and the fact that we sometimes have to tuck veggie garden beds into weird little places to try to take advantage of our limited sunlight.

garagegardenbed Case in point is the newest raised bed, which we installed in October. It’s in this little spot next to the garage door. We originally thought this would be a good spot for a little patio, but it’s surprisingly sunny considering that it’s next to the garage and under the huge maple tree. The former owner of our house limbed the maple up so high that we really only get shade from it right around noon. I hope my neighbors appreciate the shade.

So, since neither of us are fans of sitting in the blazing sun, we decided to situate the sitting area under the apple tree, where it is shady almost all day. Which left the previous, sunny patio spot open.

And what happens to sunny spots in my yard? They grow veggies!

So we built the frame for this new raised bed, which is 4 feet by 8 feet, and placed it here after pulling out the patio stones. There is no soil in the bed yet. We elected to fill it up with shredded leaves, kitchen scraps, and coffee grounds. It’s already about half as full as it was, and by the end of winter I’m betting it will have broken down to maybe 1/3 of what it was. We’ll fill the rest of the bed with compost and good quality soil in late winter, combine it with the shredded leaves at the bottom, and come planting time, this bed will be ready and waiting. We kind of did an even lazier version of lasagna gardening, really. The leaves went in, and when we had more kitchen scraps than the worm bin could handle, we dug into the leaves and buried the scraps there. Coffee grounds get scattered over the bed every couple of days, or whenever the container we use to collect them gets full.

If you have grass clippings on hand, that would be a great thing to add to a bed like this. Since we leave our clippings on the lawn, we never have any. But, that’s fine; the veggie scraps provide nitrogen to the mix.

We have a couple more raised beds to build in spring (we weren’t able to get to them before winter.) We’re finishing up our planting plan now, so I should have some plans for the 2010 veg garden to share here in the next few days. The husband and I each have a few things we really want to grow, and I know I want to grow even more tomatoes than I grew last year. It’s going to be so much fun! (can you tell I’m ready for spring?)