Rome Was Not Built in a Day. But Your Vegetable Garden Could Be.

Here is my family's Earth Day project: We put in a second vegetable raised garden bed, the same size as our first one. We used the newspaper method, for speed's sake and because we are lazy. I've never tried the newspaper method before, and I'm starting a bit late, but we'll see how it goes. I already have a fully-functional raised bed dug the traditional way, so I intend to plant my more deeply-rooting plants (like tomatoes) in the existing bed, and put plants with a shallower root system in the new bed this year; by next year, the grass and newspaper beneath the new garden bed should have completely decomposed.

First we laid out our wooden border. Then we covered the sod beneath it with several layers of newspaper, and covered that with topsoil:



The new bed is the same size, shape and layout as the old bed. We're going to enclose both beds with the same style of chicken-wire-and-wood-frame fence we used last year, and put a rock mulch path in between them, using biodegradable corn-based landscape fabric beneath the gravel.


I'll have more pictures of the garden up soon. For now, more work while the sun shines!