Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
The art of upcycling in the garden
The 3 R’s are a mantra throughout my life. It all started as a young child learning about recycling in a Ranger Rick magazine and has been carried throughout my life.
We’ve been moved in now for only a couple of weeks and my brain is slowly getting used to the fact that this is our home now. Something that will make it feel more like our home is veg beds. The last owners planted some things around the garden but nothing it seems, fruit and veg related, just some ornamental planting here and there (which is absolutely fine…not garden shaming anyone).
Location, Location, Location
Despite still being too cold for sowing any seeds outdoors we wanted to start planning and preparing where we will be setting up our fruit and veg patch. Originally, we had several ideas of where to set things up most of which were situated behind the house. Unfortunately, the house is at a strange angle and despite the back of the house facing west (nearly northwest) it gets a good amount of sun. After watching the garden for the past couple of weeks and pouring over the data (shademap.app is a great place to start) we settled on a location. Something else that sealed the deal is what is currently growing in the spot we wanted to place our beds.
Mortal Combat
Since we are in a completely new place, we have to learn all new plants. Something that caught our eye in the garden and along the roads in the area is this ground cover.
At first glance we knew it wasn’t native. After some research we figured out the name and its growing habitats. Vinca minor (Creeping Mrytle or Lesser Periwinkle), a fast-spreading evergreen groundcover that can grow in a range of soil moisture and sun exposure conditions. My first clue that it was a baddie was that it has an entire profile on a “Fine Gardening” website. My second clue was it was only growing on roadside ditches, garden beds, disturbed areas and so far haven’t seen it in any of the natural areas. While we can tolerate some non-natives and even exotic species here and there, invasive species are a no-go. Maybe I’ll do a post later on the terminology of non-native, exotic and invasive species. Regarding the invasiveness of creeping myrtle, it forms dense and extensive mats that can crowd our native vegetation, particularly in forest understories and along stream banks. Its aggressive growth and ability to root wherever it comes into contact with the soil makes it a robust competitor against any native species (Native Plant Alternatives). After thinking about the prospects of doing battle and replacing this plant with a native species a lightbulb went off … what if we decided to just put the veg beds where the creeping myrtle is and depose of it by burying it in the veg beds as we add cardboard, soil and compost … effectively smothering it. Gardening on a slope is something we are used to in our last garden.
Now that we have the place, next is what do we build it from.
Build it and it will grow
As we continue to shell out cash to fix, update and add (necessary) things throughout the house I really didn’t want to buy and build the usual budget friendly garden beds (i.e. aluminum panel garden beds). As luck would have it, the previous owners had a pile of old lumber. They looked like 4 x 4 posts 8-feet (2.5 meters) long. Based on the deterioration and moisture holding capacity of the wood it seemed like they weren’t pressure treated. After some sorting and thinking about dimensions we started lying things out and getting an idea of placement. We didn’t want the beds too wide that we would be over-reaching or too tall (on the downslope side), so we decided for about 4-foot wide (~1.2 meters). That leaves 2-feet (~600 mm) on either side to reach across the bed. Construction was going to be easy, just interlock them on the corners to stack them to provide some structural integrity … remember Lincoln logs anyone? Also rather than digging out ALL the soil (no thanks) we decided to build it in a “U” shape into the slope except for the upper most level, working with the landscape rather than bending it to our will. A quick trip to the hardware store for some screws and we were ready to build.
Next, we needed to start cutting back the vegetation, more material to fill the bed!! Once cleared it was time to start digging (a little) to level the first course of lumber and cut the wood for the sides. Then it just came down to stack, level, secure until we got to the desired height. Now it’s ready to fill … and make lasagna (insert Homer drooling sound here). To layer the bed we do a layer of the vegetation we cut back, cardboard (to smother the vegetation), compost (eventually, we are doing a quick in-bed composting since we haven’t actually made compost yet), sifted soil (to remove rocks) from the basement projects, capped off with a thick layer of mulch. We still have a while before we can actually plant anything so the bed will sit and settle. Later we will get some good compost and top soil to top off the bed and be ready for planting.
The urge to grow
Now that we have at least one veg bed put together it feels a little bit more like home. We are planning more bed like this with gravel or stone path using materials from the property. We have lots of piles of stone scattered around. Come planting time we will be ready to get some good summer produce started and over the course of the season we plan to add more veg bed to fill the space, deal with the invasive and make a productive plot. Next is to figure out what to plant as we begin to buy seed and rebuilding our seed starting kit. We will also be doing other growing experiments like planters and grow bags to use our big cement pad out the back to the house. Making a functional and pretty space to relax at the end of the day.