We took our space from grass to food in just 5 months (although you could do it faster!) And did it for cheap with this no dig garden method! You can watch the video to get a better tour of the garden.
There’s not a lot of space in the potager project garden yet. But the really exciting part of the garden is that just 5 months ago it was all grass.
We’re here in zone 6 and have a lot of time left in our growing season. In the beginning of march I began laying down cardboard and woodchips, and now there’s an abundance of food! We’re harvesting basil and other herbs out of the garden. We’re harvesting cucumbers, and now we’re waiting on the tomatoes to turn colors. But there’s an abundance of them!
The way I plan to design this poteger is four square beds at the front. And eventually that will also be mirrored at the end cap. The sides are two longer rectangular beds. And in the middle, the plan is to make an herb spiral as the centerpiece. Then to have four square beds with the corners cut off surrounding that.
I also intend to to remove all the grass in this space beyond the structured garden. This is to make room for more cottage-style wild gardens all the way around. I don’t want any grass to mow up here at all!
So it’s literally just grass, coardboard, and woodchips. To plant in, all I do is push through the cardboard to plant into the ground beneath. All of the weeds that I have are in my pathways where I did not use cardboard. There I instead opted for weed cloth. I am not a fan of the weed cloth and plan to pull it all up for the next season.
I wanted to save the cardboard and use something more permanent for the pathways, so I opted for weedcloth. My advice is: if you’re considering weed cloth, skip it.
I will say, the wood chips are fantastic for keeping weeds down, but the bind weed is tenacious. It is the bane of my existence, and I’m still pulling that stuff out. But overall, you will have a dramatic reduction in weed pressure unless you don’t overlap your cardboard correctly.
Nobody wants to talk about the sad, scary, and not-so fun parts of life, but I really think you’re doing your family a big disservice if you don’t take the time to learn to grow your own food. You may never actually need the skill, but you’ll be thankful you do know how if you ever need it.
I hope you can see that your garden doesn’t have to be perfect or the most beautiful to give you food. Eventually I want this space to be beautiful, but this is a first year garden, and that takes time.
I’m so thankful you’ve taken the time to watch my video and/or read my blog post! Especially out of all of the videos and posts you could have spent your time on. Now grab your coffee and get to gardening!
I thank you for visiting!