Try this simple above-ground technique for growing your backyard vegetables.
Sure, digging in the dirt is half the fun of gardening, but occasionally, you want something a tad less labor intensive—or maybe your yard just doesn't allow for you to dig down into the earth. Whatever the case, you can build a pretty awesome vegetable patch with this no-dig method, which is often used by organic farms in rural Australia. It's essentially an above-ground garden made from layers of organic matter that break down into a nutrient-rich living soil. (Here's everything you need to know about organic fertilizer.)
The no-dig piles are fairly stable on their own, but some gardeners prefer to build boxes to contain them. The materials below are enough to fill a 4-by-8 food raised bed, which—lucky for you—is exactly the size of this simple DIY raised bed.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
- 2 to 3 pounds bloodmeal and bonemeal
- Old newspapers
- 1 bale of herbicide-free alfalfa hay
- 1 bale of herbicide-free straw (use bedding straw, not feed straw, which has viable seeds)
- 10 cubic feet of compost (preferably homemade)
Read more here.
