Friday 2 March 2012

Virginia Garden



Well I am starting the gardening process all over again, but this time in Virginia.  And I don't have to spend time helping Heather care for her chickens and turkeys, but I do try to help Pamela, when she needs me, take care of my two grandsons.


Since the soil in Virginia is CLAY, which is as hard as a brick when it is dry, I've decided to make raised garden boxes, similar to what we built in New Zealand.


So off the Home Depot to buy the wood and have it cut.


Here is the wood stacked up by the workshop/studio windows waiting for me to get my act together and build the boxes.


And here is the first finished box, ready to be moved to the garden area.

So after waiting through three days of off and on rain, I finally got into the garden area this morning and was able to level the ground enough to get the boxes into position - just two at this point.  


Two boxes in position on the right and the tomato bed is ready to go on the left, up against the south side of the garage.

The raised boxes are 3' x 6' and 12" deep.  After lining the bottom with mesh to keep weeds out but let water drain through, I dumped in a layer of wood chips to help with drainage, a layer of humus, and then started filling the boxes with top soil.  

Unfortunately it began raining around 3 pm this afternoon and we're supposed to have more rain through the night and all day tomorrow.  I guess more work on the garden will have to wait until next week.


2 comments:

  1. What a coincidence, I just decided to blog about my micro farm, and here I find you are blogging again. Looking forward to following you again and hearing/seeing how you are doing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Terri... is the wood treated with any kind of (organic) oil or rot resistant oil... or are you using redwood etc... Our's (Which grows MINT like you can't believe) are stone, but they were a TON of work on the southwest side of the house. (AND of COURSE I made sure I was in LA when Claudio Built it. It's about 5'wide, 12' long, 1.5' high.) The lemon mint and spearmint make the best tea. We had lemon grass too (good in soup) but there's not really enough sun to grow tomatoes, peppers etc.. might try for the Artichokes, since they grow well in shade.

    ReplyDelete