Kelly and I had been talking about having a vegetable garden for a while. I was holding off cos of the work load, but now that things have settled down, I was able to start and make rapid progress.
There's a patch behind our garage that someone had used in the past for a garden. So I decided to continue with it, since it looked like a nice spot. I checked the sun levels and it's really good getting full sun throughout the day. The first row has some partial sun regions too which would be nice for shade plants.
Started with reading 2 book: Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith and The Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener by Karan Davis Cuttler. Both are good but the first one is more like a manual where the latter is more like a reference. I found myself looking at both, but more of Smith. So the first step was to figure out the pH and N,K,P levels. This I did using a soil testing kit. As it turned out the soil is very nice with medium to high N levels, K and P levels. The only problem is with the pH being a bit too alkaline, but that I read was fixable.
I first decided to go with French Double-Digging style. The basic idea is shown below in the figure, but I decided to add a caveat based on Cuttler's book. I started by digging up the sod which is the first/top layer of grass growing in the garden area. I save this for between step A and step B shown below. Step A is just digging up a bed or a row (or column) of soil.The soil is kept aside. Following this I put the sod face down into the hole. Next, as shown in step B we dig up another bed and use that soil to cover up the first row. This is continued for all beds, with the soil from the first row being used to cover up the last row.
There's a patch behind our garage that someone had used in the past for a garden. So I decided to continue with it, since it looked like a nice spot. I checked the sun levels and it's really good getting full sun throughout the day. The first row has some partial sun regions too which would be nice for shade plants.
Started with reading 2 book: Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith and The Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener by Karan Davis Cuttler. Both are good but the first one is more like a manual where the latter is more like a reference. I found myself looking at both, but more of Smith. So the first step was to figure out the pH and N,K,P levels. This I did using a soil testing kit. As it turned out the soil is very nice with medium to high N levels, K and P levels. The only problem is with the pH being a bit too alkaline, but that I read was fixable.
I first decided to go with French Double-Digging style. The basic idea is shown below in the figure, but I decided to add a caveat based on Cuttler's book. I started by digging up the sod which is the first/top layer of grass growing in the garden area. I save this for between step A and step B shown below. Step A is just digging up a bed or a row (or column) of soil.The soil is kept aside. Following this I put the sod face down into the hole. Next, as shown in step B we dig up another bed and use that soil to cover up the first row. This is continued for all beds, with the soil from the first row being used to cover up the last row.
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