Anna O'Malley

Nicole Alderman wrote: I've been meaning to share pictures of the last garden bed I made. I wanted the potatoes in contact with soil, so I "just" flipped the sod over. It only took maybe 2 hours, but definetly was harder than I was expecting--lots of digging and flipping!

This flipping over the sod method is exactly what I used to make almost all my garden beds, and it is both a really good workout and takes quite a while.  Eventually I started piling up all the prunings in an area and that killed the grass there, and then I needed to build some small ditches to move water away from the house and I put the soil from those on top of the grass where I would make future garden beds.  I was pretty happy when I moved to the longer-term process of bed making by piling up autumn leaves and covering them with a lot of fresh woodchips, as it's much easier and starts the process of building better soil.  

When I started digging up the front yard I planted flowers, but over time it has transitioned to mostly veggies and herbs, and now this spring I'm planting all the fruit and nut bushes and trees.  I just finished adding the last branches to a large trellis in the backyard built out of the branches of ornamental shrubs I cut down in the fall to make room for fruit trees.  My dad helped me build a cold frame out of free cabinet doors and some wood we found in the basement so we should have an earlier harvest of greens over the next month.  

This is what our backyard garden looks like now with the cold frames and trellis (with my five-year-old running out to play mud kitchen with the rain barrel water):

We moved into our small suburban house and yard exactly two years ago and the first thing I started doing was digging up the lawn to turn it into garden.  The first summer I dug up almost the entire front yard and went from one to three raised beds in the back.  The second summer I finished digging up the back yard and in the autumn spread a huge load of woodchips in the paths and over piles of leaves to make the last few beds where we will plant fruit trees/shrubs/bushes this spring.  In mid-March my dad helped me build a cold frame out of free cabinet doors and some wood from the basement.  

I've been using whatever I have on hand to make the garden beds.  After the first two raised beds were built with purchased wood, I started using big rocks from a construction project across the street.  To start my new beds I put down a layer of sticks, small logs, and lots of leaves (which I collect from my neighbors; sometimes I even rake their lawns for them - with permission).  Then I put purchased organic garden soil on top, as I want to be careful about possible contaminants in the soil.  I am building up the soil by making compost and by putting any plants from weeding/pruning directly on top of the soil.  

Photos of my garden from last summer (back garden, then front garden), plus one of the back garden from the autumn so you can see the organization of the beds: