A Battig Kind Of Life: A Raised Vegetable Garden

For the last four years I have tried to have a vegetable garden! I have only ever produced green beans. I do not know a lick about gardening so I didn't really know what to do. I am not a gardener to put it nicely. I don't like to get dirty and as far as anyone who doesn't know my family history would never guess that I came from a family of farmers! I will not typically be found someplace that a remote chance of a spider being or anything with more than four legs. This is out of my realm but I really am starting to see the importance of eating food that we grow. I don't like the thought of my kids putting things into their bodies like preservatives and whatnot. This year more than ever I wanted to be successful at my own garden and to be able to provide for my family homegrown vegetables without the worry of preservatives and flavors and whatever else these companies are putting into food these days. So this year I did a little research. I talked with my neighbor a bit about it last year before planting and she suggested tilling in some bagged compost into the soil. I did. It didn't work. In fact I don't even remember getting beans last year. My husband and I decided as a last ditch effort that we'd try a raised garden. I watched a bunch of youtube tutorials and we decided on one. He had the frame built with the help of a co-worker/friend in all of 15 minutes.

I laid the frame down and took the backside of a hammer and marked along the inside of the frame then removed it from the area. I took a garden hoe and took out excess dirt inside the lined area and made sure no roots were in there. I leveled the ground back out, put the frame back down and filled with 2 bags of topsoil to 1 bag of cow manure compost. It took about 22 bags of topsoil and 16 bags of compost (I did this like two weeks ago so my numbers could be misleading). I mixed the compost in the soil as well as I could and we planted the seeds and watered it. I went on vacation for a week and when I came back there were plants growing!!!!! I was excited beyond belief! Time will only tell if this will work but here are some pictures in case you are interested in trying this yourself.