Started my garden last weekend

When I was a kid we had a massive garden. I used to think it was the biggest garden in the world, and I hated it. When I grew up I never got into gardening, but it was mostly at time and location thing. Now at the ripe old age of 40 I'm starting my first real garden. I still can't say that it is because I need or want another hobby, and it is definitely not because I love my veggies! However, I do love nearly everything outdoors and this is becoming enjoyable.

We have about an acre of ground but half of it is woods, so without major clearing of trees we have a very small area for the garden. I picked the spot that gets the most sun. Last year I cut about 8 trees to expand the yard and now that has created a good spot.

Another problem we have is deer. The nuts who live all around me seem to love feeding the deer. The result is that it is not unusual for me to see 10 - 15 deer within a half mile from my house. The deer are skinny and sickly looking because of overpopulation. They eat everything under six feet high. The result is that even though we live in a wooded area, I can see 200 yards through the woods because there is no vegetation left. To solve the problem of the deer eating the garden I am putting up a fence. I am fencing in an area that is 12 feet wide and 26 feet long. Unfortunately, this is costing me something, but if we are to have a garden it has to be done. The fence system coat me about $125. I put 4x4 treated posts in the corners and a few steel fence posts in between. The fence is 5 feet tall.

Now the soil was another problem. Our ground is mostly rock with a thin skim layer of dirt. Since I don't have a tiller and the ground was going to need massive improvement, I decided to go with raised beds. For these I bought 2x6 boards. I had a few laying around already and bought ten more for a cost of around $60.

What to do for soil. O how I wish I had a truck! But I do have a 5 x 10 utility trailer which I pull with my 98 Honda Accord 4 cylinder. The car will pull a full ton, no problem, but it has a big problem stopping anything over about 1000 lbs. (that's another story). I had to pay $30 for a one yard scoop of mulched topsoil at the garden center. Man do I hate paying for dirt! My favorite way to by dirt is to have a title in my hand at the end. But it was pretty nice dirt even if it was very wet and clumpy.

One yard of dirt would not even fill a quarter of my garden and I couldn't afford to pay for more but thank God for Craigslist. I found someone giving away horse manure about 30 minutes from my home. I drove down last Saturday and shoveled about three yards into my trailer. It was free and it was nice stuff! It is about two years old, the horses had been well fed with hay, and they had been bedded with sawdust. This made for a beautiful mulched compost dirt as the picture shows. There was almost no smell to it at all, but my bulldog knew what it was as was thrilled to root through it with his snout. If anyone in NEPA is interested in some free horse manure compost, let me know and I'll give you the contact info.

So now I've got my tomatoes, peppers, yellow string beans, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, zucchini, and even pumpkins for the kids all started. I still plan to put in corn, a few potatoes, cucumbers, peas, onions, radishes, and more if there is room. O, the size of the raise beds is two at 4'x10' and four at 2' x 10'. That gives me 120 square feet of raised bed garden.

As the garden grows I'll post more pics and information.