Our Raised Bed Garden

The garden at Whisper Wind was a double dug garden and it was rather large with beds going in several different directions. during the peak of growing season it often resembled a wild overgrown jungle. Vegetables intertwined with flowers and herbs to make a mass of vegetation that only a gardener could make sense of. It was beautiful and I loved the wildness of it. However, we have one thing in abundance here at Willow Pond that we did not have in abundance at Whisper Wind.....snakes. Some of which are venomous and I really do not want to find one in my wild tangle of vegetable madness. I don't mind the non venomous ones. We have a very large black rat snake living in the tree behind the barn and we had a nest of baby corn snakes near another tree. But we have also had 3 water moccasins and one copperhead. Our dog was bitten by one of these nasties already and I don't relish joining him on the victim list. While I cannot completely snake proof a garden I can do what I can to make it not so accessible to them. So I am going with raised beds in a square keyhole configuration that will provide an outside wall to discourage snakes from entering inside the working area. The beds themselves will be 2 feet tall and covered in recycled roofing metal. Then the outside perimeter of the garden will be another 4 feet high with chicken wire covered in bird netting. We are then going to use an old screen door for the garden gate. So all of this will form our garden "room". I could have done the raised beds shorter, but I am trying to think long term. We plan to retire here and at some point in my life I won't like to bend over very much. I will still want to garden and I am sure it will remain a sort of therapy for me. So the extra height will mean that I won't have to bend over hardly at all to work in the garden. I will also be able to sit on the side of the beds to work if necessary. Typically, it is recommended that a raised bed garden be 4 feet wide, but I am short and since I won't be able to work this garden from both sides because of the wall of chicken wire I kept it to 3 feet in width. This is a comfortable reach for me since I am a bit short, but also if I am sitting. I am filling the beds in a combination huegulkultur, lasagna garden fashion. We have had many small limbs and such that needed to be cleaned up around the yard and especially in the pasture so I am gathering these and packing them into the bottom of the beds. Then I am layering old hay on top, with a layering of weeds and yard clippings, then old hay, then manure, then old hay and then soil and compost mix. It is a good deal of space to fill and I am just getting started with the filling as I am building so this is a work in progress that I expect will take several weeks to complete. I truly can't wait to see it finished though and expect that I will be really happy this spring working in my new garden. Happy Gardening, Kat