Day 142

 Deciding on a garden was a logical first step was both exciting and overwhelming. We had already started a garden made out of repurposed pallets but admittedly, didn’t do too much to actually take care of it. We understood that growing a successful garden would take planning and plenty of patience but we had the space and desire.

Time to get started.

Research started in winter when the warm winds and gentle spring showers were far off in the distance. I researched books online and had multiple books shipped to my local library. Upon picking them up, I scanned through them all, picking out parts of the books I enjoyed. I may or may not have broken a few copyright laws when making a few copies about topics I cared to pursue. While vegetable gardening was my main focus, I found information about some garden structures including compost bins and leafmoulds I found worthy of investigating.

I am a huge fan of literacy and I absolutely love books. I even wrote one. However, as helpful as  books can be, real life experience can be even better. I reached out to some master gardeners I knew for advice. One even visited and gave us some things to consider. After reading and discussing ideas with others more experienced than I, I thought it was time to take some action. Since the backyard was scraped, it was mostly mud and exposed soil. To help prevent the regrowth of grass or any other plants lurking below, I placed some extra tarps out over the expected area of the garden expansion. Besides making it a bit easier to walk around, it provided a visual that helped with the next step of the process. For a good chunk of the tarps, held down by a very small sample of the rocks that surfaced during the scraping, were covered by snow. When the snow melted and exposed a much muddier backyard, I took some of the pallets I had intended to turn into raised beds and laid them out over the tarps. Even though it obviously wasn't a garden yet, it did give us a glimpse of what our garden could be.