Getting Started on becoming a gardener

Sometimes, if i'm smart, on my way home from work, i think about what i want to get done in the couple of hours i have before the bed begins to call my name.  And in the few minutes i have before the dark sets in.

Tonight i was making a list in my head and out loud, which is the same if you're in a car by yourself.

• check on the birds
• re-fill the duck pool
• collect the eggs
• have a baked potato for dinner
• feed the kitty
• get the rebar out of the car

I have rebar in the floor board of my back seat because we bought it with an idea for how to frame up my key hole garden.  But i'm getting to that.

I got home at 6:02, breathed for a very brief moment before my hubby called to say he would be extra late tonight.

• checked on the birds, all accounted for
• collected the eggs.  two?  what do you think this is?
• fed the kitty...or attempted to feed the kitty food he didn't want to eat
• put a potato in the microwave
• started the water running in the duck pool
• started on rebar

But i couldn't just get it out of the car.  Images of key hole gardens have been dancing in my head for much too long to just get the rebar out of the car.

So lemme show you what i'm up to.

So here's the basic idea.

I'm going create a raised bed garden (don't tune me out yet) that is a six foot round diameter, with a one foot diameter compost basket in the center, and a small piece of pie cut out from one side, to the compost basket, to allow shorties like me to put compost in the compost basket.  The round will be (roughly) four feet high in the middle at the edge of the compost basket, and three feet high on the edges, so there's a slope.

Further the idea is to create walls with something and then line them with cardboard and then fill with various compostable materials.  This is meant to be a cheap garden.  Not an expensive one.  And it is meant to weather both drought and flood.  Or so i'm told.  This particular brand of key hole garden is made popular by a lady named Deb Tolman.  You might like to check out her ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, i got a little stack of cardboard from my local Family Dollar, who, when i explained i didn't need good boxes, just cardboard, was very happy to let me take their trash.  I laid out the makings of 3 big boxes and taped them together to create a big enough canvas to draw my six foot circle on.  Here it is now.  Sorry, the picture's pretty crumby.  But you can kind of see the lines.  Sort of.  Look closely.

Tonight, i used the rebar to outline my circles, and i placed my compost basket in the middle.  Like so.

Next is to secure the wire to the outside border and then find a way to make it strong enough to hold all the stuff i'm going to put in it.  Preferably, i will find free cinder blocks or some such.  100 free cinder blocks would be great!

The beginnings of a dream, such as it is.  I had to stop building as the night was growing darker, the mosquitoes more bird-like, and the supplies less plentiful.

Now for a baked potato.