Lately I've had lots of friends ask me how to start gardening
so I decided to make a blog post on how I garden on the
cheap and dirty...otherwise known as "Creamer Style."
First, have your handy hubby (or sisters, do it yourself!)
build a square box with corner reinforcements. The boxes need to have lumber 8-12 inches tall and about 4 feet long. We buy 8ft. long, untreated boards at Home Depot and have them cut in half.
Once you have your boxes assembled, cover the bottom in at least two layers of cardboard. This will smother the underlying grass and attract earthworms, they love to eat cardboard!
Lay yard debris on top of the cardboard.
We have an area behind our barn where we take all our yard debris like grass cuttings, limbs, twigs, and leaves. I contribute a lot to it during the winter months and by spring it has mostly decomposed. This layer will help provide some drainage for the garden soil and will put organic matter into the soil as the season progresses.
Next, add a mixture of garden soil and compost then water well. That's it! Your garden is now ready to plant or you can leave it to sit until you (and the weather) are ready.
As you can see, compost is a big part of the Creamer garden.
We were gifted this wonderful composter when neighbors of ours moved. It's a Good Ideas Dual Senior Compost Wizard and it makes quick work of breaking down all our kitchen scraps,
along with a handful of earthworms.
We also have that spot by the barn I told you about for the bigger stuff. Just turn it with a shovel every now and then, and by the end of each season you'll have some nice compost!
There's no reason gardening has to be expensive. With a small investment in the beginning, your garden boxes should last several planting seasons. Just keep adding your composted materials and you'll never have to buy soil or fertilizer!
Get out there and plant something!
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