I had decided to try a raised bed this year. Our yard is a hill with the garden plot at the bottom - the top gets more sun and has better drainage, but to turn it into a garden plot would mean uprooting my dad's beloved lawn. So, I work with what I have - the natural area at the back corner of the lot. The spring rain in 2013 completely flooded our garden, and what didn't drown, the happy slugs devoured. So, a raised bed it was, both for drainage and to keep pests out. Thankfully, we rarely have to deal with anything bigger than insects.
Maximizing the small space that we had became my priority. And, it had to be aesthetically pleasing - something my mother insisted on. We found fence pieces at Lowe's inexpensively in six foot lengths, and the Octogarden was born. I started by digging up the soil, shovel by shovel, and turning it over. Double-digging is suggested to aerate the soil, especially for crops like asparagus. But I didn't approach it in textbook fashion with three trenches. I have a bad habit of simply taking the general idea of something and being too impatient to analyze it closely. I just want to get started!
I was happy to have the planks laid out in a rough octagonal shape and staked as they were. My mom, however, ever the planner, measured angles and lengths until it was a much more respectable semblance of a regular octagon. Thanks, Mom!
To the left of the initial shape above you can see the Tipsy Pots that we later moved to the center of the bed. I'll cover their construction in a later post.
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