Let’s take a trip back in time, way back to winter—March 25! That’s when I started the project that was to consume much of the next three months. Without further ado, a high-speed photo tutorial on How to Make a (Critterproof) Garden from Scratch:
Find a nice piece of land, preferably fairly level, and stake out your corners. If you’re a redneck like me you’ll already have big dead patches of pasture from where your junk trailers had been parked for the past year:
Next, borrow the services of a family member with a pretty sweet new ride-on tiller!
Once the ground is broken up, add peat moss, sand, compost. Till that in.
Decide the garden looks too small. Repeat above process to increase area by a third:
Final garden: 20′ x 36′. Looking good!
Work stops to wait out the final snow of the year on March 27.
When not working on the garden, get acquainted with brand-new, eight-week old Bonafide Farmdog:
Next up: Deeproofing! Set posts and string tensioned wires to support 7′ deer fencing:
Puppy raising takes time away from the garden and in the meantime, spring has sprung! On April 23, begin hanging deer fencing, a slow process when done alone. This is heavy-duty polypropylene that should last a good number of years:
Stay tuned for the rest of the garden build, including all the essential critter-thwarting tricks!
[...] Carving a garden space out of a field was a major undertaking, and fencing and tilling and adding soil amendments and lining paths with landscape cloth took much of the fun out of the early garden season. But even with a late start I harvested my own food from May to late December, and for much of the summer ate only produce I grew. Plus, I gave bags of vegetables to coworkers, friends and family. Not bad for the first year out. [...]