The garden is expanding!! After two summers and two winters supporting our local farms by buying farm-shares, trying tons of new vegetables, learning the growing seasons and what thrives in our area, we have decided that next year, we will try to grow a much larger percentage of our own food.
Farm shares are an awesome way to get an abundance of fresh, organic, and local produce, usually for a much lower price than at the grocery store. Supporting your local farms and eating with the seasons is also an awesome way to improve your diet while reducing your carbon footprint! But food prices have been skyrocketing at the same time that we were feeling like we’re getting too much food from both of the farm shares that we’ve tried. After two years of absolutely cramming as many odd greens into our diets as we could possibly fit, we’ve learned what we like, and don’t like, and how many veggies we can realistically eat and still enjoy our meals and all that cooking required.
So we’ve decided to downsize our vegetables, and our monetary costs, by (greatly) expanding our own physical and mental efforts….if that makes sense. We’re expanding the garden! Not just any expansion either, we’re expanding to the front yard. This particular spot of the front lawn dies every single year because it gets too much sun, too much heat reflected off the driveway, and not enough water for the very sandy soil. You know what could use more sun and heat? Most food crops. With an upfront investment of 2-years farm share cost (at this year’s prices) we were able to build and fill just over 76 cubic feet of gardening space which should be enough, if I do a very good job of planning, to grow most of the vegetables that our household of two humans could consume in a typical New England growing season. If we grow most of our veggies ourselves for an estimated 2.5 years (when you add cost of water, fertilizer, seeds) the beds will have paid for themselves. I obviously hope to grow in them for many more.
I acknowledge that there is a learning-curve in gardening and I probably won’t get the same yields that a professional farmer would at the same scale, but the beauty of small-scale farming is that there is a lot less waste and pivoting is easier on a small scale. I have successfully grown a number of vegetables in the backyard garden but I always run out of room to grow enough for the whole season (except for tomatoes and hot peppers which I debatably plant too many of every year). With new expanded gardens where there is more sunlight I should be even more successful, all other variables the same.
Ok so what did we actually do to build these beautiful (the FedEx lady said so) vegetable beds? First we ordered the modular bed pieces online as well as 3 yards of clean-fill to level the ground where they would go. We inevitably built little mounds for them so they’d sit level on the slightly sloped yard. Then we assembled the beds and put them in place, checking that they were level and straight many times. We filled the bottom half with logs and yard waste, and the top half with 3-yards of finished compost mixed with perlite. Black mulch, a plastic border, and new grass seed make them front-yard presentable, and the black weed barrier is in place to prevent winter erosion and early-spring weed germination. The decorative pumpkins are just for fun. Not pictured, today I tucked the weed barrier in with landscaping stakes and marked the edges with reflective snow-markers. We are winter ready!
