Any tips on gardening?

[Kirkwooder]

There is lots of free, or nearly free soil base's for your raised beds. Most town's/cities have a compost site where you can go get lawn debris,that has been composted for the bottom 1/3-1/2 of your raised beds. If you live in a rural area, straw, leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, and sawdust are often readily available. Top that off with a commercial top soil potting mix and you should be good to go.

As for keeping the critters out, human hair in an old nylon stocking placed around the garden works great.

 

[Sally PB]

@Chickies11, I love your enthusiasm! Of the plants you mentioned, strawberries are perennial, meaning, you plant them, and there they are for many years. A 5x6' area can be filled with just strawberries, easily.

I have raised beds, but they are just mounds of dirt, about 3.5-4' wide, and as long as will fit in the space where they are. Yeah, the sides kind of spread out. So every spring I dig what has settled down up and pile it back on the top of the bed. I am reinforcing the sides with rocks or cement pavers as I can.

As for compost, look up the Berkely method of "hot" composting on how to make compost faster. Last summer was my first summer with chickens, and I had the BEST compost ever, thanks to the chicken poop. One caveat: you have to turn the pile a lot to keep it perking along and heating up.

If you are looking at making a permanent area into a garden, the one thing you have to have is enough light. You can amend the soil, you can water. But if you don't have 8 or more hours of sunlight, not much will grow.

 

[TheCrochetChick]

I have 7 plots that are quite large. Every year I top them off with 1-2 XL bags of Black Cow (manure) My homemade compost and about 3 HUGE bags of garden soil. It all depends on what you are growing though. The whole idea is to "refresh" your garden plots year by year. Some plants thrive in sandy soil and some, in denser stuff. I would do a ton research on everything you are going to grow... you won't regret it. Hope this helps!

 

[Chickies11]

Thank you everybody! All of this is very helpful! I will definitely be doing more research! I think the place I am planning to grow gets about maybe 6 hours of light. Could be more. Is it possible for a plant to get too much light? If so, which ones? I might try to grow something on the roof top deck which is full sun. The roof top would also mean no pests. I'm also looking into hot composting.

 

[Chickies11]

For a couple years I did do the tilling of the ground for my garden but then settled on the raised bed idea. Raised beds can be pricey especially for all the vegetables I plant. So I decided to build 1-2 raised beds a year so it wasn’t so expensive at once. Now that I have all the raised beds I want, the next idea is to slowing make them taller so that when I am older, I won’t have to bend over to garden.

That's a good idea!