Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Converting Old (flat) Garden to Raised beds

I've gardened in a flat land (at sod level) for past few years.  Early spring, every year I see the grass creeping in and taking over the sides of the garden.  During the summer, grass sprouts everywhere inside and it takes me forever to rip them out, inadvertently pulling tiny seedlings along with the grass roots. 

This spring, I was too tired to work on the tangled grass with its deep roots.  I just had an idea to convert the whole garden into raised beds - 3 of them.  It was quite easy and I am proud to say I did it by myself!!  Here's the progress in pictures. 

OLD garden(imagine without the 3 beds).  See the creeping grass...

Work in Progress- Layers of wet paper underneath the soil.

Wet papers before mulching(to smother weeds)

Mulched the edges all around!

Nice and Neat!  All done(except fencing)

I am planning to add a 7 feet fencing all around this garden, as I've had too many deer problems last year with a reasonable height fencing.  After that, I have to figure out how I will get in and out :)



4 comments:

  1. Very nice. I get grass in my garden too and might eventually upgrade to a raised beds.

    For now though, I just keep pulling the grass out as best I can.

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    1. Thank you! It was done over two weeks :) Took a lot of soil to fill the beds! I usually lose good plants when pulling out grass, which is very sad. Hopefully, this will keep the weeds out, for a long long time!

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  2. Looks great! So glad I don't have to deal with deer in metro-Detroit. My 3 ft fencing keeps out rabbits/opossum/small children =) You'll love not having to weed those beds this year!

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    1. Thank you! I didn't have deer problems for past few years and then last year, deer visits were very common. It seemed to treat this part of the garden(with 3' fencing) as its private buffet, visiting several times over the gardening season. I was hearbroken to say the least. So 7' fence it is :)

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