I am sick of weeds. I finally admit it. Any theory I may have had about allowing other plants to grow alongside what I have planted was wholly disproven last year. This year I am going the other way, and building a fortress.

In years past, I have tried various approaches for gardening. If you plant on bare soil, in-ground, diligently removing all weeds, your garden will start strong. As the summer goes on the soil will become parched and cracked, and if at some point you let up for even a few days you will be overrun with grass coming up everywhere. Unless you use some kind of alternative approach (such as straw-bale gardening) this has been my general experience.

Last year, I tried something slightly different and used a layer of straw over my garden. This led to a much more manageable weed problem, and my spring and early summer crops flourished because the water stayed close to the ground. As the summer pressed on the straw decomposed I started to get parched soil and cracking. In an attempt to keep the ground wet, I let some wild plants continue growing. While this strategy did keep the moisture in the ground, despite my efforts I became overwhelmed with weeds, and in the end my harvest for some of my late crops were destroyed.

This year I am going to the next level - raised bed gardening, with proper mulch on top. The theory is, by raising the beds you gain a bit of control over the water, create a static barrier for weeds, and can completely contain erosion. By mulching the surface, it will contain the water in the soil and prevent weeds from taking root. It strikes me as a very good theory. Good enough that I invested quite a bit in getting together the materials to put it in to action.

When building raised beds, there are a few considerations that have to be made. Your important variables you must control for end up being - walls (material, level, width, height, spacing), ground (soil, fertilizer), and cover (mulch).

For my walls I chose concrete cinder block as it makes an excellent material for constructing raised beds. It provides great water control, pest control, doesn’t leech, and has the durability to last for quite a while. It’s not the cheapest option anymore, but it doesn’t really seem like there are any alternative better options in this year’s market, and prices are only getting worse. Case in point, at one point last summer I saw concrete block at $.80/block, and I bought about half a palette. Now the best price I could find was $1.79/block.

My gut is telling me that with inflation going how it is I won’t see even these current prices anytime soon. I ended up buying two palettes of cinder block along with a full yard of mulch. While this is enough for what I’m doing now with a bit to spare, I’m still wondering if I should go get more to allow for any future expansion.

With material in hand, the first step is now creating the beds. In preparation, I burned off everything from the surface. By using fire to prepare your surface, it destroys plant matter that gets bound up in your tynes, kills a lot of seeds from existing weeds, and fertilizes the soil. I have tilled without first burning before, and it was considerably easier when I prepared the ground this way.

In most construction you create a good surface by leveling the ground, and then adding some elements to the substrate to facilitate a solid and reliable surface; mainly achieved by adding sand and rock followed by tamping. I really don’t want any of that happening in my garden, so alternative and less ideal approaches must be considered.

For each bed I used the tiller to work the ground underneath in an attempt to level things out some and break the surface seal of the ground. I proceeded in laying out my block without mishap. While everything came out square, my area does lie on a slight incline so the end result turned out slightly off level, but this isn’t really a problem that is worth investing too much effort in to at this point. The fact that the area was tilled and footing unsupported means the ground is going to settle quite a bit. I have a feeling I am going to have to revisit my block levels quite a bit as they settle out if they are going fit together snugly, so this is a problem best relegated to the future.

Despite the not quite perfect level at the moment, the beds really did turn out quite nicely. I like the size they are, as I can still reach the middle by leaning over the edge without having to brace myself against the soil. This should make planting, weeding and harvesting relatively easy. I opted for smaller beds (lengthwise) this year so that I could isolate my crops to only one type per bed. I spaced the paths between the beds wide enough to bring yard carts and wheelbarrows through, which should help considerably with various gardening tasks; including being wide enough that if required they can be mowed.

One advantage of having livestock (donkeys, goats, and chickens) is that they produce a lot of… animal waste. To this end, I had at my disposal a massive pile of donkey straw and will soon have an even more massive pile of goat straw. This is great for two things. One, herbivore animal waste and bedding makes great fertilizer, even when fresh. It decomposes as the year goes on, creating a long-lasting nutrient source for your plants, and it is not hot-waste (ie, it is safe for the plants to use right away). Chicken straw on the other hand is a bit hotter, so you can’t use it quite as directly; and the piles the dogs and cats leave are very hot and actually pretty bad to put in at all until they have sat exposed for a season.

Another advantage of livestock straw is it turns in to dirt. This process doesn’t really take very long either. The recipe for high grade topsoil ends up being - create a layer of straw a few inches deep; wait a few months. Last year I lined all my paths with straw and by the end of summer they had mostly decomposed. By the end of winter, there was nothing left of them to be found.

If you want to speed up the process you can plant squash, okra, or some other hardy plant in the straw. It not only will accelerate the decomposition, it will throw off massive plants from all the readily available nutrients. We had several straw piles on our fence line to which I planted squash and okra towards the end of summer. These piles produced some of the biggest squash I have ever seen (some were almost 3 feet long).

Given that I have added so much straw to my ground over the years, I decided to mine my own dirt directly from my garden using my tiller. I had some concerns that this was going to create a large pit in my garden, but it ended up leveling out a good chunk of incline, and provided my necessary resources at only the cost of a few hours of being outside on a warm sunny afternoon.

Now I have fertilizer, and I have topsoil. To develop the ground in each bed I stratified them with alternating thin layers of donkey straw and thick layers of topsoil. By creating multiple layers it increases the contact surface area which accelerates the development of the soil biome leading to better decomposition. This process worked out very well for what are now one-deep block beds. Hopefully I can generate enough new topsoil to raise the bed level to two-deep next year.

Phase 1 is now complete, and I am pleased. Phase 2 is next: the mulch still needs to be added to the beds to control for cover and water; but for now I think it is early enough to let the weather settle things out some. The next priority will be mucking out the goat barn and lining the paths with straw before the whole place becomes a springtime mud pit, with all the extra going in the spot where I mined my soil.

I still have some theories on companion planting that I may test in the future, but this year I will be testing monocropping and see how the yields compare. I seeded some cold-weather plants in a few of the beds (lettuce, turnips, and beets), but it is still a bit early to start planting in earnest. I will say, based on how everything is looking so far I am pretty excited to see how things turn out this year.