I decided to try building my own standing raised garden bed. The ones I've seen on-line and at garden stores around here are just insanely expensive—anywhere from $200 to $600, depending on size. If you want more than one, a quartet of beds could cost as much as $1000! One of the points of growing your own veggies and fruits is to save money at the grocery store. How does one expect to save any money paying that much for garden beds? Of course, those of you who live in areas where the soil isn't rock hard red clay haven't as much of a need for raised beds. Around here though, there are as many rocks in the soil as the dirt itself.
Northern Georgia is part of the Eastern U.S. piedmont—basically an ancient, decrepit mountain range. Embedded in the soil content are lots of decaying rocks from a once substantial chain of the Appalachian mountain range. Mostly mica, quartz, and feldspar, which is basically decomposing granite. Granite itself is rich in lots of minerals, such as iron oxide and maganese, and these are good, abundant sources of nutrients in the soil here. However, because the average home gardener is more or less digging in crumbling granite, the soil can be mighty tough to crack. Thus, the desire for raised garden beds.
So, rather than spend a gajillion dollars on pre-fabbed raised bed kits, I decided to see how much time, energy, and money it would take to build my own. It cost me roughly $30 and about three hours of time, although I think the construction time will be reduced since I was in experimentation/trial and error mode on the first one. It turned out well, I think, but I've yet to see how well it hold up after use, which is the next experiment. Really, this whole gardening thing is an experiment. I do that—experiment a lot, I mean. I get a lot of grandiose ideas and go at them gang-busters, then lose interest unless there's some kind of relatively quick, rewarding pay-off, and I think gardening requires a lot of patience and willingness to accept failure.
I mean think about it, unless one is in a completely pristine garden environment, free from all diseases, fungi, pests, and errant weather, there are a lot of odds against the home green gardener. I've definitely learned that cayenne pepper is a friend. Spidey mites and aphids have tried to take advantage of my veggies. Also, there are random "failure to thrive" issues that I just sometimes can't figure out. For example, why don't some seeds sprout? They all came from the same packet, got the same soil treatment, water, light exposure, etc. While some seeds have a type of hyperactive disorder and spring up like a shot out of a canon, some peak out and amble up at a more leisurely pace, and some take a little nappy in a blanket of fluffy soil for a while and come out of hybernation when they damn well feel like it, way after the others. And then there are those seeds that either fall asleep in the dark dirt and never wake up, or they were just D.O.A. slackers to begin with. I guess you could say all seeds have unique "personalities," some personalities more a like than others, some more prone to ambition and success, some are just procrastinators, and some are just plain schizo—much like most things in nature.
Northern Georgia is part of the Eastern U.S. piedmont—basically an ancient, decrepit mountain range. Embedded in the soil content are lots of decaying rocks from a once substantial chain of the Appalachian mountain range. Mostly mica, quartz, and feldspar, which is basically decomposing granite. Granite itself is rich in lots of minerals, such as iron oxide and maganese, and these are good, abundant sources of nutrients in the soil here. However, because the average home gardener is more or less digging in crumbling granite, the soil can be mighty tough to crack. Thus, the desire for raised garden beds.
So, rather than spend a gajillion dollars on pre-fabbed raised bed kits, I decided to see how much time, energy, and money it would take to build my own. It cost me roughly $30 and about three hours of time, although I think the construction time will be reduced since I was in experimentation/trial and error mode on the first one. It turned out well, I think, but I've yet to see how well it hold up after use, which is the next experiment. Really, this whole gardening thing is an experiment. I do that—experiment a lot, I mean. I get a lot of grandiose ideas and go at them gang-busters, then lose interest unless there's some kind of relatively quick, rewarding pay-off, and I think gardening requires a lot of patience and willingness to accept failure.
I mean think about it, unless one is in a completely pristine garden environment, free from all diseases, fungi, pests, and errant weather, there are a lot of odds against the home green gardener. I've definitely learned that cayenne pepper is a friend. Spidey mites and aphids have tried to take advantage of my veggies. Also, there are random "failure to thrive" issues that I just sometimes can't figure out. For example, why don't some seeds sprout? They all came from the same packet, got the same soil treatment, water, light exposure, etc. While some seeds have a type of hyperactive disorder and spring up like a shot out of a canon, some peak out and amble up at a more leisurely pace, and some take a little nappy in a blanket of fluffy soil for a while and come out of hybernation when they damn well feel like it, way after the others. And then there are those seeds that either fall asleep in the dark dirt and never wake up, or they were just D.O.A. slackers to begin with. I guess you could say all seeds have unique "personalities," some personalities more a like than others, some more prone to ambition and success, some are just procrastinators, and some are just plain schizo—much like most things in nature.
