When we started work on our garden, we didn't know what was in the ground. We still don't. As Rebecca said, most of our lot consists of two basements that were allegedly filled-in with paving stones. We don't know what else is in these pits, so we decided to put in raised beds. We'll be eating a lot of what we grow in this garden, so we want to limit how much toxic nastiness our plants consume.
You have to work with what you've got, and we've got gravel. Plenty of it. Gravel can be great for improving drainage, but digging in gravelly dirt is not fun. We'll be planting some trees in this area, and I don't want to dig through any more rocky soil than I have to. I began by moving the gravel from the raised beds into the paths. After a while, I started just piling it up out of the way, back by the fence. Once the raised beds are in-place, I'll spread the gravel onto the paths.
We also had plenty of weeds, more optimistically known as "opportunists". Yes, there are plants that can grow in gravel and dust. Given enough time, they would have grown, died, and composted themselves into a layer of soil on top of the gravel. We don't want to wait that long, and we also don't want so many of those particular plants. So instead, we're putting down a layer of cardboard to smother the weeds. We got this cardboard from a few different sources. After Adam and Cecelia moved, we took the boxes back to Pittsburgh. The rest we pulled out of various dumpsters and recycling drop-offs.
The edges of the beds are bricks and cement blocks, most of which we got from
Construction Junction. We tried to find good sources on Craigslist, but that usually did not work out. Construction Junction was a pretty dependable source. The blocks did well for the straight border along our neighbor's wall. The bricks are great for curvy sections.
That is a big pile of dirt. That pile is the first 8 cubic yards of blended topsoil and compost that we bought. We ordered 16 yards (two truckloads), but they only had room to dump 8 yards in the lot. That ended up being a blessing, since only half of the beds were ready to be filled when the first truckload came.
Getting this soil delivered was a pretty major production. The 10-ton, single-axle dump truck didn't have much room to maneuver down our alleyway. I scheduled them to come on trash day, since that is the only day such a large vehicle can get through. Most days, one side of our street is lined with parked cars, which doesn't leave much room for anything larger than a minivan. Everyone moves their cars for the garbage truck to get through on Fridays, so that was the only day the dump truck with our soil could get to our lot.
After the soil was delivered, I used a wheelbarrow to move it into the beds. Then, I stacked a second course of bricks around the beds. These were solid bricks, without the holes in them like the first layer, which suddenly gave the garden a finished look.
Then it was time to plant some seeds. Finally some actual gardening!
Honestly, the hardest part of the process has been gathering the materials. When you are trying to avoid using new materials, you have to wait for items to become available. We started creating a stash of bricks last fall, and we still need to get more. We only recently started searching the local dumpsters for cardboard. I wish I had started doing that earlier. The local Subway and Rite-Aid have a steady stream that would otherwise end up in a landfill. There seems to always be some freshly broken-down boxes lying on top. We haven't had to actually dive into a dumpster, yet.
We're still trying to get up to date with this blog. The first truckload of soil came two weeks ago, and since then we got the second load. We'll keep posting about the current work in building and planting the raised beds, and we'll also share a bit of our inspirations and the design process. Happy gardening, folks!
