Setting up a garden presents a myriad of questions. First, we debated whether to grow in raised beds or straight into the ground. After our soil test came back looking relatively good for nutrients and free of contaminants like lead, we decided that growing directly in the ground was the most cost-effective technique. Once that was decided, the next question was how to transform the ground from lawn to garden beds. We had already done some gardening at the very top of our property, next to a huge stone statue of Poseidon, a relic of the Stotesbury estate that used to stand nearby. Unsurprisingly, the ground next to the statue was filled with rocks, which led me to assume that the rest of the property would be similarly rocky. With that in mind, hand digging sounded little short of crazy!
However, upon further inspection I found that, once away from the statue, the rest of the ground was actually not bad, so I marked out the beds and set to with a shovel. I decided to go with three-foot wide beds. On the past two farms I have worked with four-foot wide beds, which are just wide enough that it makes weeding the center of the bed fairly difficult and uncomfortable for me, so three feet seemed like a better option. Using sticks on either side, I ran string along the borders of the bed and then worked my way down, digging up the grass and exposing the soil underneath. As an added bonus, there were several areas in other parts of our property in need of sod, so I was able to transplant what I removed!
Despite what I had anticipated, hand digging was pretty fast and easy- I was able to remove the sod from a 3-foot by 32-foot bed in about an hour and a half. However, removing the sod also means removing a lot of the soil that is attached to the roots and all of the organic matter that this grass, roots, and soil provide. So after digging the one bed and seeing how much was removed, I decided to look back in to tilling, which will work all of the grass into the soil, providing a nice layer of organic matter to help feed the plants throughout the season. Although tilling is rough on the soil and as a result causes some loss of organic matter, I felt that this loss would be less than what would happen with the removal of all of the turf. Fortunately, we’ve got friends farming in the area and were able to get someone to come till up our 900-square-foot section for a reasonable rate this Sunday. (After years of tilling on farms, I’m happy to pass this particular task off to someone else whenever possible!) Once that’s done, it’s on to the next step- putting up all the fencing we need to keep out deer, groundhog, rabbits, squirrels, and anything else you can think of!
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