Raised Bed Garden

Here is a picture of part of the garden for this season. We do free standing raised beds and have 5 beds 4-5' wide and 2 beds that are about 2' wide all the beds are about 35-40' long. We picked up about a ton of compost that we worked into the soil to get it ready before we did our raised beds. The soil is heavy clay so we will have to work in as much compost as we can along the way.

We are going to try a few new things this year to see which works best for us as far as weed control. Some very generous people gave us several hundred feet of landscape fabric and landscape plastic so I thought I would give it a try and see how it works! (PS Thanks Bill & Analise!). My son absolutely loved rolling out the long pieces of fabric and helping me cut the ends...I didnt pick the best day to do this because it was pretty windy, but with his help we got all the rolls tacked into place so the wind wouldnt take off with our work!

We have 3 beds that have landscape fabric and then 1 bed that is landscape plastic, then we have a few beds that are not covered. We are going to cover the entire garden with straw to help with weed control and moisture control.

I also heard that putting down newspaper and straw in the walkways will significantly help with weed prevention...but I dont think I have that much newspaper!

The landscape fabric is holding down really good by itself, but the plastic is tearing right through the garden stakes and becoming a mini kite! I ended up putting tied straw bales over the plastic just to hold it in place until we can get our water lines set and then cover it with straw...but I dont want to cover it with straw to then have to go back and dig the bed back out.

ITS GETTING CLOSER!! :)