What I strongly urge you to do before you put the shovel to the soil is to go to the local library and look up gardening. The Section will cover at least one long book shelf if not more. Yes it is that complex – not complicated, but there is just so much information on the subject.
What you need to decide right off is if you want to go organic or other wise. I would strongly recommend organic gardening. The addition of lime is barely considered organic gardening. If you are planning on using chemical fertilizers over compost, you will make your garden and addict to those and will have a hard time switching in future. If you are planning on chemical pesticides you will create a whole slew of other issues since you will kill off helping insects as well as pests.
I would recommend raised beds being 3- 4 feet wide to where you can reach inside of the bed with out stepping in them. I would also suggest that you look up Compost & composting. Mulch and Mulching and Organic Pest Control.
For the beginner (If I moved to day to a new house I would be a beginner, starting out from scratch) I would strongly urge starting off with one bed no more than 15 feet long. Why? Because you need to get a spade and dig into that grass, pulling (by hand is the best tried method) up the grass out of your dirt balls, then turning the soil to a depth of at least 18 inches, dressing the sides of he bed with a grass barrier, adding compost to the bed, then you finally get to planting and the real fun begins.
A raised bed is designed with a few things in mind.
1. It provides drainage. Flooding or drowning is the number one cause of death in hoe vegetable gardens.
2. A bed is designed to where you never have to step on the soil. You want your soil to be loose, not compacted. The less amount of time you spend turning and hoeing the soil the more time you get to spend doing other things.
3. Raised beds also allow you to have a pretty garden, and do not require heavy machinery to keep up and plant.
I would strongly recommend that when you dig your bed to line the perimeter with 1x6 redwood. Pine rots too fast and pressure treated will leech poisons into the soil which is taken up by the plants and then you eat those plants. Bury them 2-3 inches down – this will create a barrier to keep the grass out. It also provides you with a few inches to hold material on top of the bed. Ideally I would go with 12” (grass plate fencing material
) buried 3-4 inches with 8 to 9 inches above ground, this would provide you with a nice wall to hold in mulch.
Mulch can be anything from grass clipping to raked up leaves, it can also be newspaper (not the glossy stuff) covered with clippings.
Mulch is very, very important in that it holds in moisture (less watering) and it prevents many weeds from growing. It also regulates the soil temperature by insulating the soil. In a freeze are I would suggest a foot of mulch in the fall. We did that in Kentucky and even in the dead of winter we had unfrozen soil beneath the mulch.
Compost is very important as well. Not only does it provide you a place to dump your organic materials (left over plant parts, leaves, grass clippings, potato peels, egg shells) it will provide you with humus, a black, nutritive rich additive that will make your soil very strong and make your plants grow like nothing else.
In the end I can not provide you will all the hints in one post. Again, there is so much data out there that it would require many books to cover it all.
Here are a few links which may be helpful to get you into organic gardening.
http://www.gardenguides.com/TipsandTechniques/successi.htmhttp://www.organicgardening.com/http://www.dirtdoctor.com/http://www.hdra.org.uk/organicgardening/gh_comp.htmhttp://www.mayococo.ie/Environment/HowtoCompost.asp- Note on composting, you do not need to buy a plastic bin, you can just pile the stuff up and it will compost all on its own. I made a circle of 3’ high wire fence 4 feet in diameter, I just throw stuff in there from the time I empty (Around the time the leaves start to fall) until mid summer – I let it sit until fall, then throw everything into the beds – not all of the material is composted, however with the cover of mulch over that by the time spring rolls around the material is humus)
Now this is just the start of information. Again, there is so much information out there hat you should start studying. I strongly suggest a library card – read the books and once you figure out which books you prefer the most, then go out and purchase books. I have a full shelf dedicated to gardening alone – most of those I bought used BTW.
I would strongly recommend that you observe the light in your yard. A vegetable garden needs at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day – 8 is better; a full day is the best. Start off small and add to it.
An herb garden may be the very best way to start, along with a few choice vegetables, say tomato and beans the first year – both are hardy and are easy to grow.
Other things to look up would be Intensive gardening, Succession planting, Companion Planting (This is where you learn that planting marigolds along the boarder of your vegetable garden reduces the amount of pests – and this is where you learn that Potato and onion really don’t get a long
You also learn that you can plant pumpkin vines among the rows of corn doubling the amount of stuff you are growing on the same land.)
