Observe and Interact

The garden is in full bloom…

Just kidding, though it is in full sprout. The weather has been chilly, dipping into the low 30’s some nights, and very wet. Our region receives about 65 inches of rainfall a year with over half falling during the hurricane season. Following is an image of the garden taken a few days ago, after several days of rain. Here lies one of the vexing problems of a Florida farmer or gardener that I made reference to earlier – to raise the beds or dig them in. Certainly if I were a farmer in the northern part of the county, blessed with fertile soil and a higher elevation, I would probably dig in. This is not the case. Should I have located the garden on higher ground, across the street? Maybe, maybe not.

 

Garden Preparations

Gathering materials is one of the most time-consuming aspects of preparing to prepare the garden. We decided to take the quickest route to completing the resource collection by purchasing ten 40lb bags of topsoil and a block of peat moss. While we were at the store, I couldn’t pass up the tantalizing display of 75% off bulbs – never mind that the bulbs aren’t necessarily native, edible, or even site appropriate. Sometimes, we just need a flash and a pop in the garden to give us the confidence and motivation to keep going through the seasons. Instant gratification. We also purchased a discounted wheel barrow, an axe, and a bag of lime for a total of $125. Ideally, I would have preferred to procure the topsoil and peat moss by other means, though scraping the forest floor for the few inches of nutritive soil that it may yield, would have taken considerable time. 

 

Garden Bed Sketches

Garden Bed Sections

I found this sketch that I drew a year ago, when I started toying with the idea of creating a garden at Eden.

Sketch 1 is a swale adjacent to a raised garden that is built up with sheet mulch.

Sketch 2 is a raised bed created from 8″ C.M.U.’s

List 3 is some of the wild edibles & medicinals that grow in our bioregion.

I’ll post a CAD design of the garden in the near future.