Building a raised bed on top of the lawn

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Time to get serious about building a veggie garden

Last week, I posted a video of Scott Meyer, editor at Organic Gardening Magazine, giving step-by-step instructions for creating a new garden bed on top of a lawn. The timing of finding the video couldn’t have been more perfect for me because we are currently building a fenced-in veggie garden that will have four 4X8-foot raised beds.

The technique of building up the soil directly on your existing lawn is a fantastic way to build a veggie bed because 1) it’s less work not having to dig out the grass, and 2) it allows you to keep the nutritious top soil in place.

So here’s the process of layering in banana leaves, soil, compost and hay– kind of like lasagna!

We’ll let it sit for a couple of months while it all breaks down into the perfect medium for veggies, just in time to plant in the spring.

P.S. The hens are enjoying their time in here while they can. Soon there will be a fence all around the new garden: The veggie buffet will be closed to all chickens!

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Tags: Food, Garden, Hawaii, Health, Healthy Living, Organic, Organic Gardening

3 Responses to “Building a raised bed on top of the lawn”

Leslie

20. Feb, 2009

It already looks so beautiful!!! What kind of wood did you use? So many people around here think it’s ok to build gardens with treated wood and railroad ties and don’t bother to look for safe alternative – they don’t realize it leaches chemicals and poison in to the soil and into your food. Another thing people do is put plastic down to kill the grass, not realizing it is putting chems into the soil too… my neighbor and I grew the same organic lettuce from the same organic seed, but she put black plastic around hers to keep it from having weeds. Whenever we ate my lettuce we felt fine, but every time we ate hers we got crampy and sick.

Those big tropical leaves you layed down are awesome looking- having leaves that big makes it really easy. I love that Scott Meyers video made the whole thing look so easy- I wish i had seen this layering process years ago. I might hoe alot less this spring now that i know how to do it.

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Mokihana

20. Feb, 2009

Beautiful! I love the lawn poking up inside the frames. That video is inspiring and we so look forward to have some Earth to plant. Your chickies look so happy and won’t they be surprised when FENCE is part of their life.

Neat-oh Susie! Love it.

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Susie Collins

20. Feb, 2009

Leslie, the wood frame is made of eucalyptus planks and we got them directly from a local mill. It had been milled the day before we picked it up. My husband traded for it, so it was “free”! I LOVE trading for things. We have enough to enclose all four beds.

Mokihana, those naughty chickens already got in there and kicked the banana leaves all over, gobbling up worms whose job it is to break the stuff down. BAD chickens! So mad at them. Now I have the banana leaves weighted down with rocks. Hope to get the fence up soon. For some reason, they never think to fly up over a fence. That’s what happens when your brain is the size of an olive.

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