The Outdoor Classroom

When we bought our house last August, one of the first things I noticed was the location I wanted to put my garden. We have a very narrow and small "backyard" (really it's the side of our house as a huge garage occupies our entire backyard). Behind our garage looked, to me, to be the perfect place for my new garden! I also really wanted our last science unit to be a square foot garden. We have been making some great changes toward healthy eating, and having the kids grow their own vegetables is another way I want to do this.

This weekend Rick and I started Phase I of getting the area prepared for our gardens. We put in an iron fence to keep the dogs out.

Then we laid 4 mil. plastic over the entire area and pinned it down. This area is a total weed patch and I did not want to spend my whole Spring and Summer pulling weeds!

Rick made me three 4' x 4' raised boxes and we positioned them down the center of the area. He also made me a 1' x 16' bed against the back of the garage for my herbs and fruits.

Finally, we covered the whole area with 24, 3-cubic foot bags of cypress mulch.

My husband did not do all of the work himself. Yes, I was there, too! And, I even got dirty!

In the next couple of weeks we are going to place some pavers down the sides of the raised boxes and get the boxes filled up with a good soil mixture.

Then it will be time to plant!! One of my boxes will be a dedicated "pizza garden", with all of the vegetables we like for pizza. Another one will be a dedicated "salsa garden", with all of the vegetables to make salsa (with lots of jalapeños for my husband). The third garden will be for the kids to do a square foot garden for their science lessons.

I hope to find a cute iron bench and some other decorative goodies at some garage sales this summer. I am also going to be planting lots of bird, bee, and butterfly attracting bushes along the fence for beauty and pollination. I am sure this garden will be a work-in-progress. But I think we have already made some great progress!