Starting our raised-bed garden

There’s nothing I love more than fresh-from-the-garden peas. My father had a green thumb and every summer his fresh, tasty fruits and vegetables would prove it. My husband and I knew we wanted to have a garden, but when we moved into the earth home we were faced with a few predicaments.

First, the soil in north-central Minnesota is very sandy and typically holds little-to-no nutrients (with the exception of cattle fields). Secondly, our home is located in a swampy, pine-tree consumed area with a lot of shade. And third, we have a lot of herbavores, such as deer and rabbits.  After compiling a list of our main garden needs, it included the following three items:  1) sun, 2) fencing and 3) soil. This list didn’t sound too hard to do at first, but we quickly learned that starting a garden isn’t easy.

We had read of no previous caretakers who had planted a vegetable garden, so we have no tips of where or how to start one, so we are tackling one task at a time.

Sun

It finally occurred to us to put the garden as close to the house as we could, but in the sunniest spot, which  we found was on our roof. We figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to dig up the roof, since it already had leaking issues, so we knew it had to be a raised-bed garden. After doing a little research we bought un-treated cedar boards and made two 4X4-foot squares for our garden.

Fencing

After learning two 4X4-foot beds would be enough for us to start our garden, we had to figure out how much fencing to use. How much room do you allow to surround the raised beds? How thick should the fencing be? What size of fencing can’t  a rabbit squease itself through? We had so many questions! We calculated we would need 50 feet of fencing at about 4-5 feet high, along with fence posts.

Soil

Our outline is now complete, but how to get soil? I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to find rich, local top-soil. Of course, it is easy for anyone to find soil in stores such as The Home Depot or Menards out of bags, but it would’ve cost us an arm and a leg and we wouldn’t have known where it came from or if it is organic. Luckily, we met someone who was happy to give us top soil from her family’s farm fields about 40 minutes north of Bemidji. Next week we should have the soil in and then the fun begins!

Here is the frame (made of untreated red cedar boards) of our raised-bed vegetable garden. WE ARE VEGIE GARDEN ROOKIES SO IF YOU HAVE ANY ORGANIC VEGIE GARDEN ADVICE, PLEASE COMMENT! WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!!! THANKS!

Composting in Winter

When we moved into this earth home we knew we were going to start a new lifestyle. We were going green with full force! We heat our home with wood, we reduce, reuse and recycle on a continuous basis, and since our roof is made of sod, we already have a green roof!

     But, as we’ve found, there are only so many green things you can do on a limited budget and strong gusty winter weather at your door. I guess our ideas of a solar panel and tapping into geothermal energy will have to wait! In the meantime, we intend to start a small organic garden in the spring. What better to start an organic garden than to use organic compost.

     There is a primitive compost “bin” (chicken wire shaped into a square) near the earth home, but we’re not really sure what’s under the foot and a half of snow. So, our question is…

How do you compost in the winter?

    I suppose I could look it up on Google, but I’d like to try and figure it out myself. Here is what we’ve come up with.

Our very technologically-advanced bin of compost.

     We keep this bin of compost waste in the fridge until it fills, and when it does we dump it onto the frozen compost pile outside. We’re not really sure if leaving frozen food sit on top of snow-covered compost pile is smart, but we don’t know what else to do with it at the moment.

     If you compost at home, please let us know how you handle composting in the winter! We would greatly appreciate the advice!