I confess that I’ve had the permaculture design sketch from the last post done for some time. And getting our raised bed garden established was one of our first goals, but life got in the way of sharing it with you.
We moved here in August, 2015 and, between unpacking the contents of our former home, building in the back porch, installing a wood stove and all the other projects demanding immediate attention, I couldn’t commit to starting a blog that would need constant attention.
So how ’bout we do a little backpedaling here and I’ll show you one of the things we’ve accomplished since August?
My first goal was to establish a deer and other varmint proof main garden space. Using the principles of permaculture, I will eventually move most of our vegetables out into the overall landscape but – to start – I needed to have a large space to get some vegetables growing and well protected. Here’s why:
We have a doe with twin fawns who love to browse through our little half acre. They’re not the least bit afraid of us and generally stand their ground when we try to shoo them away so our garden space had to be well protected. The solution was a raised bed garden completely enclosed by bird netting to a height of 7 – 8 feet.
Tilling the soil was not an option. In permaculture, the idea is to not disturb the soil any more than is absolutely necessary. Since there wasn’t time to build enough compost here on the homestead, we had truckload after truckload hauled in. I followed the practice of putting down cardboard to kill underlying grass and weeds and then spread the fresh compost on top. It was a lot of hard work but our raised bed garden turned out just the way I had hoped it would and it’s there, ready for planting. Here’s a photo report on the project (click on an image to enlarge):
