Garden Secret

Backyard gardens, a wonderful refuge! But rototillers aren’t cheap, and sore backs aren’t that great either. So here’s a secret for doable beds. The dirt in our yard is full of stones and clay, making all the work of digging it up and tilling a bit redundant anyway, and this method works beautifully

My old lavender bed wasn’t producing well. Recognizing that the problem was too much shade, I searched for a sunnier spot.

Save cardboard boxes for your garden, the bigger the better! You can use magazines or newspaper as well, but big boxes make the job super easy. I’m listing the steps for you. Some of the items you’ll need are linked. If you don’t have them on hand and buy them through the link, as an Amazon affiliate, I make a small commission.

• Lay a garden hose to mark the location of your choice. When you like the configuration, mark the area with spray paint. Another option is to use stones.
• With a shovel, like this Root Assassin One Shot Garden Shovel, 43″ D-Handle, dig up and remove 6-12 inch sections along your marked edging (I collect these grass plugs in my wheelbarrow, and use them for a pathway in the non-grassy portion of our yard)
• Lay your cardboard or old magazines (10 pages thick) over the grass inside your dug-up edging.
• Cover the paper with dirt, or mulch like this FibreDust CoCo Mulch, 11- Pounds, or both.
• To keep weeds from spouting, try Preen 2464092 Extended Control Weed Preventer – 4.93 lb. – Covers 805 sq. ft. It’s a great help, but not necessary. Your new garden looks fabulous already!
• Wait as long as you can. If you wait over winter, great, but in the pictures below, I only waited a few weeks.
• Decide on and purchase what you’d like to plant. Perhaps you’ve started seedlings, good for you! The pictures show a bed of Phenomenal Lavender, which I use for distilling essential oil.
• Move your mulch or dirt aside, then dig a hole at least 3 times larger than what you are planting. Enrich that area. Because our soil is full of rocks and clay, I take out most of the old dirt and add a few tablespoons of Jobe’s Organics Bone Meal Fertilizer, 4 lb, and a few shovelfuls of compost (save all vegetable matter and let it rot into rich compost), and plenty of dried manure (if you don’t have a farmer nearby to purchase it from, here’s a ink for Black Kow Composted Cow Manure 5 pound bag). Add water and mix well with shovel or pitchfork.
• Remove your plant from its container. If the roots are tight, loosen them. Set it gently into the soft, rich soil. Be sure plant is at ground level, and if you need to, add dirt around it.
• Re-lay the cardboard and mulch around the new plant. Repeat until bed suits your fancy. Use your garden hose to keep it watered.

So that’s the secret! Here are a few pics of this process in action.

Have a great time planting! By the way, gardening is also a great time for meditating on truth.

[Isaiah 58:11 ESV] And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.