Full sun. Tends toward slightly damp soil except in the driest of dry seasons. Close to water source. Close to electric (tiller & weedeater). Close to house. Fenced in to discourage deer. Close to paddock & chicken yard, for weed & damaged produce disposal. Has grown some of the best, thickest, greenest grass (weeds) on the property.
Future site of the garden.
Eva's extra paddock. She's done a petty good job of mowing it this week.
Step 1: remove the paddock, remove the hidden over-grown elec. wire & posts, mow.
.... sorry.... I can't ever take a video without getting my finger tip in it
There's a stack of 16' old rotted oak boards that will contain the beds.
And 4 plastic rings (each 1/3 of a barrel) behind the wood that I'll use to grow potatoes. I'll be moving them! I wouldn't stand a chance trying to fight the weeds .... and the TREE that have currently taken them over.
The plan:
Use the old fence boards to build 3 beds. Each one carefully setup to be just a little bit wider than my wheel barrow and 2 mower's width apart. The 1 closest to the fence will be about 20' long I think. Then 2 shorter ones as you move farther from the fence, maybe 16'.
They'll be open on the north end (right side) so that I can push the wheel barrow into them.
I'll lay down cardboard from work first to hopefully suppress the grass & weeds. Then - slowly - I'll be bringing loads of manure & rotted hay from around Eva's hay feeder; which is just across the driveway. I'll also be dumping the litterboxes over the manure. Before anyone freaks-out, I use pelleted pine stall bedding (for horses). The poo is removed daily & once a week I dump what has by then turned into a pile of loose, fine sawdust with no pee smell. It'll help add 'brown' to the very 'green' heavy compost that I'm building in the beds.
As I fill each bed, I'll run the tiller through to mix the manure with the pine bedding.
My HOPE is to have at least 1 bed full of good compost by next season.
But I'm going to
expect to do more fighting weeds than harvesting produce as that's usually the nature of a first year garden.