I would like to talk about the importance of growing our own food. With the way our world is, it is so important. I don’t care how much money you have to buy all the “organic” food in the world. Unless you know the farmer, you don’t really know what you are getting. With that said, props to all the true organic farmers out there. When a product is sold, it is done so to bring in money. As you have seen on your grocers shelves you can find many ”natural” and organic foods these days. This is very simply supply and demand. People have spoken with their dollars and companies are meeting those demands. I love seeing more of this…BUT, there are so many benefits to growing your own. Gardening isn’t for everyone…but everyone eats 😉 It is such a great skill to have and to teach our children.
Are you are interested in growing food but don’t know where to start? Maybe you have a lot of questions and feel that you don’t know what you are doing? Maybe just the thought is overwhelming? BUT, oh how you would love to have fresh food readily available! If this sounds like you, this post is for you. Our fears stop us from many things in our life. When you think of gardening maybe the word fear doesn’t come to mind. Essentially those thoughts I mentioned, if we pick them apart, may come down to some fears. Maybe that fear is messing up? Perhaps wasting time? Maybe it is wasting money? Maybe it is simply not a high priority for you? And let us all be grateful for grocery stores and farmers markets for the times in our lives when we need them! Sometimes we just have so many questions we don’t move forward. It may not be a priority for your family. It is for mine.
We live in a culture that believes we need to be an expert in order to do things. That mentality stops us in some cases from believing in ourselves. It leaves us thinking we have to know everything in order to try something new. Well friends, I am here to tell you that you do not need a masters degree to grow food. You don’t need a bachelors, nor an associates. Plants are awesome and amazing in their ability to keep on keeping on. There is that. I will explain that further shortly. Also, there is a lot of value in learning through trial and error. A lot. If the thought of growing food is overwhelming because you think you don’t know what you are doing, please, read on.
I really want to encourage you to start. Just start. If you never plant it…whatever it may be, it will never grow. It doesn’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be an expert. In fact, I am going to talk about how easy gardening can be here in this post. Yes, gardens take work. No doubt about that. Today I am going to share with you how I garden and why I chose these methods. I have had several gardens. By far, my favorite, is having raised beds. I chose this after getting pregnant with my last child and not being able to keep up with the garden. Then, guess what happened next? I had a baby, lol. I could not keep up with a garden. That garden was a big fat mess full of weeds after such neglect. You do not need raised beds to garden. There is nothing wrong with having a garden directly in the ground! You can do it any way you like! But this is my preferred method. It comes with some great benefits like no tilling and many others when you get them established. Beds have more upfront work but once they are done, are so much easier in my opinion. The benefits of the upfront set up far exceed the extra work for me.
The first thing I did was think about how I could make beds with very little money. The thought of metal beds came from learning about growing sweet potatoes. They like heat. We happen to have zero shade and sweet potatoes do well here. Metal beds would help heat up the soil. I started looking for materials and read up on safety. I had a friend that had some old corrugated roofing buried under some brush on his property. He kindly gave it to us. We bought some rough cut lumber at an Amish mill locally and got to work. I marked the metal and my husband cut it with his circular saw (blade in backwards) while I hid behind a garage door. I really enjoy working with wood but was afraid of cutting metal for sure! Do be careful if you go this route. We used rough cut hemlock wood as it was the best we could afford at the time. I don’t recommend hemlock. It weathered very quickly. Cedar would have been a better choice but it was out of our reach at the time. Use what you have and do what you gotta do. We built the beds 6’L x 3’W x 16”D. We worked with the dimensions the metal pieces were. They were double that high so cut them in half. We were able to build 6 beds for very little money.
So we started with six beds. The following year I found metal beds almost the same size except they were only a foot deep. We bough 12 more beds over the year as we could. There was a great sale after the first six. I think we paid around $40 a bed for the first six and $30 something each for the next six with an even better sale. These beds were so much easier! They are all metal so should hold up much longer. I put them together alone with ease and placed them where I wanted them. Every year we invest in something that will feed us. Fruit trees or berry bushes or canes…for a couple of years we invested in beds as we could. At that point we then had 18 raised beds. I absolutely love raised beds. They have no bottom. We weedwhacked very short and placed them on the ground. I then put a barrier down to kill the grass and such. I love using old cotton or wool clothing or bedding for this. I don’t use any synthetics. We save our old clothing, sheets and towels through the year for this purpose. We use it as landscaping fabric. It is much better than the plastic stuff especially when growing food. Thick 6 mil plastic is fine for inbetween beds or rows to keep the weeds down as well as killing off an area prior. I hope to eventually add flat rock with thyme in between where the grass has been killed off for less maintenance. Back to the beds! You can also use cardboard in the bottom of the beds before filling. Just be sure to trim the grass very low first. Fabric lasts much longer than cardboard and newspaper and I prefer it. Covering weakens the plants so they die off easier. Think of what happens to newspaper when it gets wet vs laundry coming out of your washer. Fabric is much stronger. Thick cardboard works well too. The key is covering it deeply enough. Both things will rot over time. But if done well, it will kill the plants below.
Depending on the depth of your beds, you may want to add some old wood if you can. Wood such as that found in the forest. You don’t want to use treated lumber in your bed…or outside your bed when growing food in my opinion. Grab a wheelbarrow and gather old rotted wood to put as your first layer of your new beds. If you don’t have access to this, grab a tote or feed sack and head to some state land or a neighbors or family members home. You might also find branches and things out at the curb on certain days for brush removal in a neighborhood. You could call your local DPW to find out when. Maybe you have a refuse center with piles available? We live in the country and have woods so we just go out back and gather. Find some wood that will fit in the dimensions of your bed. Old rotten wood is wonderful. This layer will continue to breakdown and will offer your plants moisture from underneath. I like to top the wood with a layer of old leaves and twigs after that.
Next we add soil. I have two favorite soil sources. The forest floor, or our old composted chicken bedding with manure all throughout. So to recap thus far: Make a bed. Cover the floor of the bed with a natural material that will block out light from the grass. Add some old rotted wood. Top with old leaves and twigs, fill with soil. If you have to buy soil, this will get expensive fast. Find what you can from other sources. Someone may have a big old pile of composted manure that they would love for you to get rid of. Ask around. Post in community groups.
WAYS TO MAKE GARDENING EASIER:
RAISED GARDEN BEDS
Raised garden beds make life a lot easier. My beds are 6’x3’. I really like this size. I can easily reach in from any side to weed. In a bed style of planting, you plant closer together so fit much more food in a smaller space. For example, if a plant needs 6” in between each other, in a traditional garden, you would have one row of that plant with 6” in between then lots of space in between the rows to walk and harvest. In a bed, you plant that same plant 6” in both directions…no rows. This method can be done directly in the ground or in a raised bed.
I realize some do not have the means or capability to grow food. Gardening is physical work. Putting up food is work. Both of these things take time. However, there are methods that can make gardening easier and preserving faster. Gardens can be made to accommodate physical challenges. For those with ground to plant in that have physical difficulty, perhaps raised beds would help. You can make beds deep and use a garden bench to sit while gardening. Everyone is going to be different in this regard but if you really want to garden, find a way if possible. Perhaps someone without the ground to plant in would be willing to do the work on your land and share the bounty.
If you do not have your own ground to plant in, ask a neighbor or friend or family member. Maybe look into starting a community garden. Sometimes grants can be found for these kinds of things. Maybe your community already has a community garden. Where there is a will, there is a way!
This year has been a particularly difficult one for me. Planting was not super high on the priority list. I planted only two flats (72 cell). And then only added to what was already there. This is big folks.
LEAVE A PLANT
One of my best tips for easy gardening is leaving one of each plant to go to seed. Don’t pull it out in the fall. Leave that baby alone! Resist the urge to clean out the garden. Because raised beds are not tilled, the plants freely seed themselves into the beds and you do nothing! They pop up in the spring with zero effort from you. You can then do what you choose with them. You can rearrange if you desire or leave them or give them away. This year I had parsley, cilantro, dill, mizuna, kale, lettuce, red mustard greens, borage, Swiss chard, carrots, garlic, chives, tomatoes, nasturtiums, and sunflowers already growing in my garden. Let me tell you, this was a Godsend for our family. This is the way these plants were designed to grow! It doesn’t need to be hard folks! I filled in the open spaces with seeds and rearranged some. This took very little work. Gardening does NOT have to be hard.
So folks, I would like to offer you encouragement to START GROWING! Start growing in whatever way you can! It doesn’t need to be ”perfect”…you just need to start! It is okay if things don’t go exactly as planned. I hope this offers you some inspiration to grow some food! It is wonderful walking outside and gathering your own home grown food! Happy planting!
