Mail Call: January/February 2011

By Grit Staff
Published on December 6, 2010
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Early season preparations for the raised-bed vegetable garden.
Early season preparations for the raised-bed vegetable garden.
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Pastor Marion E. Fast put our July/August 2010 article (
Pastor Marion E. Fast put our July/August 2010 article ("Do-It-Yourself Swing") into practice and built this homemade swing.
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Raised-bed gardening did well for Lynda and Karl Grenon.
Raised-bed gardening did well for Lynda and Karl Grenon.
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Now THAT’s a sweet potato.
Now THAT’s a sweet potato.

GRIT readers offer tips, feedback and more in Mail Call of the January/February 2011 issue.

Aspiring Green Thumbs

We have lived at our home for about 20 years, and in that time I have had at least three small vegetable gardens. None hold a candle to the one we grew in 2009. My husband, Karl, was not really into gardening, but that year, since the economy was in such bad shape, he was in the mood to grow our own food. This was his first attempt at gardening, and I wanted to share our adventure with you and your readers.

We live about seven miles outside of town on five wooded and rocky acres. You can go around and pick up tons of rocks, and, by the next week, it seems like they are all back. We also have whitetail deer that eat all my flowers, so we needed a high fence. Our garden measures about 30 feet by 40 feet. We decided to make a raised-bed garden. We put up a 6-foot fence around our garden area, then we started to wheelbarrow in the topsoil we ordered.

The raised boxes are 2-by-12 boards, 4 feet by 8 feet, with chicken wire attached to the bottom of them to prevent the gophers and moles from coming up into our garden. The next step was one of the most fun of all – choosing what to plant in our garden. Then we waited to see if anything would grow.

My husband and I would take our coffee and tea out into the garden in the morning and see what was growing. It was fun as well as relaxing. We now had an outdoor room where we could go to discuss the day and be excited about our garden.

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