Creating A Raised Bed Garden Over Grass
On the west side of our home, there are a few pruned shrubs near the house, then there is unwatered grass in the side lawn down to the street curb. There are no trees or shrubs in this area of the west side lawn to block the direct sunlight all afternoon. I wanted to convert some of this unused sunny ground into a raised bed vegetable garden for future planting.
I started working in 9/2019, and created the raised bed you see me sitting on below. I've been working in 11/2020 on expanding that first raised bed garden. Thus far, I have added 52 square feet of new raised bed garden space this month.
How? Method? I lay down the concrete blocks (16"x8"x8") in the pattern desired. Then I lay cheap doubled cardboard over the grass. On top of the cardboard I add, at various times in the year: small wood chips, leaves from our sweet gum tree, grass clippings, composted cow manure, kitchen vegetable garbage, bags of raised bed soil, back yard soil from digging, bags of vegetable and flower soil, 16-16-16 fertilizer, , etc.- in short, organic materials. I get my blocks and bags of organic material from Ace Hardware or Lowe's in the nearby Orchards' neighborhood.
Here is how the west side raised bed garden looked in August-September 2020. We enjoyed eating many tomatoes, squashes, peppers, zucchini, garlic, onions, and cabbages. We also enjoyed sunflowers, nasturtiums, marigolds, and other summer annuals.
September 2020
There are a few pictures below that show some of the ongoing process of creating an expanded raised garden bed in 2020-2021.
"We seem to have lost contact with the earlier, more profound functions of art, which have always had to do with personal and collective empowerment, personal growth, communion with this world, and the search for what lies beneath and above this world."
- Peter London, No More Second Hand Art, 1989
For me, this gardening project involves my personal empowerment: gets me moving, keeps me physically active, provides for regularly scheduled enjoyable work assignments, and allows me to create something useful pretty much on my own. Family members help a little and we all share in the beauty and productive output of the new raised bed garden. I always have personal growth in my knowledge and appreciation by doing, by refining my planning skills, by using good judgments to balance means and ends, and in creating something beautiful. Gardening generally brings people into closer communion with fundamental aspects of our world- a communion of touch with the soil and the spirits of the seasons. Here I searched beneath the new fertile soil; and, from above, maximum sunlight. Here I searched with my own hands and body by nurturing fertile soils; integrated with a few aspects of the scope of the mind of gardening language and gardening tradition far above me.
"Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden."
- Sir Walter Scott
Gardening and Art
The Spirit of Gardening
