Keeping Weeds Out

You probably noticed in my last garden post that there were a ton of weeds surrounding our raised bed garden.

I hate weeds.  I’m getting to the point where I can tell the difference between a newly germinated plant and a weed.  Almost.  Our garden is adjacent to the woods in our backyard, so there are plenty of weeds just itching to invade the small sanctuary we made for our garden.  And because many of them succeeded, Greg went out there on a cool Saturday morning and took a weed wacker/trimmer to all of them — clearing out the space until you could finally see beautiful brown dirt again.  Once he was done weed wacking, the enclosed garden looked quite nice against the thick verdure of the forest behind it.  [Side Note:  We want to keep our garden completely organic, so we haven’t used any sort of weed killer.  This keeps our garden free from those oh’ so bad chemicals.]

Next, we covered the ground with more of the corn based groundcloth in order to keep the weeds from regrowing.  I enjoy using this stuff because of it’s fabric nature.  Once the cloth was laid out, Greg had to secure the groundcloth by nailing it into the ground.

little watcher

Greg used twigs (as nails) to nail the groundcloth into the ground — I really enjoy the way this man’s mind works

And lastly, we covered the groundcloth with a nice layer of mulch and added stones around the outside of the fence (Greg dug up the stones from a creek that runs through the woods in our backyard.)  That should put a stop to most of those nasty weeds!  (It’s been a few months since we added the groundcloth and mulch, and it’s still pretty much weed free, except for the occasional outlier.)

And what a difference this has made!  I love our little garden!  I haven’t taken many photos of the container garden on our deck, but that’s exactly what it is, a garden in containers.  Hopefully photos of that in the near future.  Next up is probably the most important question, what have we been growing???

Feels like ages since I last wrote about our vegetable garden — April to be exact.  So much has happened since then.  What have I learned thus far about gardening?  I’ve learned that I love our little vegetable bed and container garden.  I love weeding so that our precious veggies can grow free and strong.  I LOVE when it rains, because that means our plants grow even faster.  I’ve learned that I like using a spade.  Now I just need a nice pair of gardening gloves, because I’ve been using my bare hands to dig holes, pull weeds, and plant!  Lastly, I’ve learned the beauty of organic eating (on a meager vegetable garden scale) — the earth and its produce never felt as sacred as it does now.  Oh to hold a summer squash, germinated from seed, in my hand is one of the best feelings in the world!

So back when I last wrote about our garden, I left off at fencing a garden.  And so I continue…

Fencing a Garden

Once Greg crafted the raised bed, it was time to fence it off from the myriad of deer, rabbits, and whatever else would be after our humble crop.  [Keep in mind that prior to even making the raised bed, he prepared the ground by doing a lot of leveling to make sure the bed would be on flat and even ground once it was finally placed.]

So once it came time for fencing, he measured a large enough space for the raised bed with ample room to walk around the bed.  He then laid out an eco-friendly corn based groundcloth to keep the weeds out of the raised bed garden.  He used a few rolls of fencing wire to enclose the garden, along with wood stakes placed every few feet as reinforcements for the wire.  Greg’s makeshift fence also came fully equipped with a door he crafted.  Call me silly, but I was so excited when I saw the door hinges!

See the wood block hanging from the twine?  Greg made it so that if you pull the wood block, the locking mechanism inside the door unlocks the door to our secret garden, ok, well not so secret garden.  I love my husband.  If you don’t already know this about him, he is uber cool. : )

There’s so much more I could say, but I’ll post more tomorrow.  Next up, keeping weeds out.