Insta Garden

A client requests a modest vegetable garden at the height of the busy season and the end of veggie-plot planting time... What is the harried gardener to do? This, accomplished in about 3 hours (including supply shopping).

The roll of poultry netting is 25 feet long, so measure a square with 6 foot sides and pound four wooden stakes in the ground.

Forget the shovel; sheet mulch! As luck would have it, the lawn mower man has been shredding leaves and chipping brush for the past few years and piling it at the back of the client's lot. The piles are at varying degrees of composted-ness. The least rotted leaves are the first layer, because they'll slick down into a nice greasy barrier against the grass and weeds below.

Add a few inches of semi-rotted leaf compost.

Third layer is purchased - four 40-pound bags of a nice black peat-and-compost mix. Heavy on the compost, yes, but since not all of it is entirely broken down, not all of it is accessible to the roots. It will feed them over the season as it settles and is processed by earthworms, who are cordially invited by the slimy leaves to enter and eat.

Time to plant - and densely, because if Mother Nature doesn't thin 'em, I will.

Fencing up. Wood chip path added. Because I can't count, extra stakes had to be harvested from the hedgerow, sharpened, and pounded in for the gate opening. One more stake for the gate latch, which I am particularly tickled with. Here's how it works...


Lift up the wire loop...

...and then lift the gate post over the peg. It might take a human only a moment to figure this out, but I am quite sure it would take a Tiny Bunny a lifetime. However... can he squeeze through the space between gate post and stake? Of course! After gorging on parsley and young cucumber leaves, will he be expanded and trapped inside like Winnie the Pooh? Surely.

Finally, a ring of wood chips is added around the outside to make things easier on my friend the lawn mower man. The end.