While in marriage preparation, I was encouraged by the priest who was celebrating our marriage to take up a hobby. His suggestion, being the one who tills the soil at St. Michael's abbey, was gardening, because it was something that is not only hard work, exercise, but also can beautify the home and bear fruit (literally). Not until I started gardening did I fully understand this. There's something about pulling weeds that is such good penance, I often feel that with each weed I pull, it's like pulling the weeds from my own soul. Since then, it's been a goal of mine, to learn to garden, specifically building a vegetable garden in our yard. So we finally did it!I wanted to show how for anyone interested in creating something like this:
We opted for a raised garden, which is easier than digging up tons of dirt and replacing with the filler.
Fortunately, my husband and father-in-law are quite handy, so they constructed the frame of weather-treated wood, 12" high and 3 feet wide is the important sizing info.
I layed down some organic, biodegradable weed blocking mats on the bottom.
Then came the natural liner, which will break down to produce some good natural compost. We used a nice collection of leaves and branches from our yard.
Next, a whole lot of good ol' smelly maneur! Mina was watching saying, "Stinky."
A final thick layer of compost to top it off...
And voila!
Can't wait to reep the fruits of our labor, and eat them!
5 comments:
That is so cool! It looks great!
What did you plant in your garden???
So far, I've planted Roma Tomatoes, Cucumber, Green Beans, Orange Bell Pepper, and Basil. Plenty of space left for some berries, more herbs, and I'm debating potatoes.
Does anyone have some tips for potatoes? They intimidate me a bit.
Whatever you do, DONT PLANT MINT!!! It completely took over my herb garden, went into the grass and we've found some between the house and our patio. You know what, it's prolly fine if it's in a pot far away from all your other plants. Also, make sure to put the cages on the tomatoes while theyre still little - I put them on too late last year and mine died.
Haha, I'll remember that about the mint. Didn't even consider it because we never use it, but good to know!
By the way, I was thinking ("uh oh") about what you said about sharing a hobby with your hubby...our original plan was to do gardening, but with my black thumb that was just not a good idea...those poor tomatoes and my crazy herb/weed garden. It turns out that we had a hobby in disguise: interior decorating! Matt designed our downstairs bathroom, we both came up with a cool paint job for the playroom, and we've been collecting tools and ideas to do panel moulding in our bedroom. Mmmm...We also found a cool china cabinet at a garage sale and completely redid it and hope to do the same with nightstands and a desk/chair for our room. Our big goal is to tile the downstairs ourselves. And the upstairs bathooms. And redo the laundry room floor with drains so I can't flood it again. We have a lot of fun spending time together, and it's nice because we can offer up the work for our family :)
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