Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Raised Beds: Check!

Ta Da! Raised beds. Primed, painted, painted again, and moved into place. There are sprinkler heads out there, and our sprinkler guru will run little spray heads up to the beds in spring. I can hardly wait.

But for now, lasagna gardening:

First, you put down a layer of cardboard or five layers of newspaper. They advise wetting it, but in the fall it seems to me that you can wait for rain. So I left mine alone.

Next, a layer of green stuff. In my case, it's grass clippings. We've been asking the lawn-mowing service to pile up the grass in a dark, quiet corner all summer. So there's a goodly pile up there, some of which has already composted. It's gorgeous, black soil. Other bits are still green. So I shoveled a bunch into each bed.

After that, you alternate layers of brown (in our case peat moss or dry leaves) with more green. The beds are about 3/4 full, and I plan to just toss a few buckets at a time into the beds until all the grass and leaves are used up. Then the winter can do its work, breaking down all that organic material into delicious, nutritious soil for my spring planting.

Mmmm...lettuce, peas, spinach, chard, and carrots. Those are the seeds I've got so far. All that's left is to wait.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That all looks very colorful and, potentially, delicious.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering what kind of paint you used for these beds? and primer?

Anonymous said...

I was wondering what kind of paint/primer you used for the beds? We're organizing a school project for kids to paint their school's raised beds. Thanks!

Fiona said...

Rebecca,

It's Sherwin-Williams paint and it's a glossy exterior paint. I used an exterior primer and though I don't remember what it was I told the guy what I was doing and he gave me a primer.

I think if you just throw yourself on the mercy of the store they will help you. The great thing is that paint comes in so many wonderful colors. My son likes the color and it makes the garden colorful all year - even when there's nothing in it.