I am going into my fifth year trying to garden here on my farm. I have ranching and farming neighbors who have been at it for generations, and their gardens are amazing. Mine? Not so much. There also exists a large Amish and Mennonite presence here in this area. They have large and productive gardens. I could just buy from all the neighbors! But, I wanted to have my own garden, which gives one a sense of security and food system control. It has been a several year struggle.
The 2025 gardening season was a positive change from previous years, and now in 2026 I am very pleased with the choices I made. I spent the time and effort to construct, with help, 18 raised beds. I needed them at least hip high so as to avoid the bending over, which gets more difficult with age. The Pro of tall raised beds is that garden maintenance is less work once it’s all done. The Con is it takes a lot of soil to fill those beds, as well as a lot of lumber to construct them. 8 of the beds were metal beds, and the rest were made with treated lumber. The metal beds were expensive. The lumber for the rest of the beds cost about the same as the 8 metal beds, but they are larger.
The wood beds were constructed using 2×12 boards, stacked 3 high, to get the height up to 36 inches. Each bed is 4ft wide and 8ft long. The beds were braced in each corner using screwed in blocks of wood and strategically placed rebar in a vertical fashion. Once the beds were filled, they were solidly in place. To keep weeds and various native plants from growing up through the soil from underneath, I repurposed the heavy vinyl sheeting I had used to kill off the lawn and native plants.
The garden area is approximately 100 ft x 75 ft = 7,500 sq. ft. Not quite a quarter of an acre. Yes, it is a large garden space, but since I was converting lawn into a garden, I didn’t want to start too small and not have room for expansion. The area had to be fenced to keep the deer out, and on 2 sides, the fencing is 6ft away from other farm fencing. The reason being that deer have no problems jumping one fence, but when they see a double fence line, they view it as a trap and won’t jump both. The other two sides of the garden adjoin the lawn areas around the farm house, which are guarded by livestock guardian dogs. This method has kept the deer out of the garden. Also, I allow the livestock guardian dogs access to the garden space, so they keep the rabbits, voles, cats, and other critters out of the garden. The dogs are not big diggers (unless there are voles involved), so that wasn’t a problem. However, they did enjoy jumping up into the raised beds for a nap. I had to train that out of them.
Why such a large garden? My garden is not just about me. My garden, should it ever be successful, is about feeding my large extended family, and my neighbors. It is about creating abundance where none existed. It is about not having to shop for fruits, nuts, vegetables, root crops, or berries. In my mind, it is a very significant work that I am committed to.
Know Your Land
In previous years I had tried a number of methods to garden in the existing soil. It has been one of the most frustrating experiences on this farm. I live in an area with untamed woods all around me. There is an abundance of native plants, which is great for foraging, but horrible for gardening. When I first started the garden, I selected an area that got the most sun from early until late, but got some shade at the hottest part of the day due to some trees. The garden is on the East side of the farm.
I hired a neighbor to plow the area thoroughly. I thought that was a good start, but what the plowing did was bring up all the native plant seeds that had laid dormant under the manicured lawn. The “lawn” went from picture perfect to a jungle of native plants very quickly. I live on the top of a rocky hill. The plowing also brought up more rocks than I have ever seen in one place other than a rock quarry (being dramatic, but that’s what it looked like). The big rocks were moved out of the garden, but there were millions of smaller ones about the size of my hand. It became clear to me that I could not rid the garden of all the rocks. But, back to the native plants.
For instance, we have such a thing as Poke Weed (Phytolacca americana). It is a plant that grows tall with prolific branches full of berries. Its roots are considered rhizomes, so they multiply and travel quite a distance underground. The plant is almost impossible to get rid of. The berries are considered medicinal if used in small quantity (purportedly as arthritis relief), and the birds rely on them as a source of food. In large quantities, the berries are poisonous to livestock and people. The leaves, when young and tender, can be picked and cooked like a spinach (“poke sallet” as it’s called in Appalachia), but not eaten raw. The roots, when chopped and dried, were historically used topically, but I’m not sure for what ailment. I just know that this plant has been the bane of my gardening existence and has lived here in Appalachia for millennia. One year I thought I had rid the field fencing of Poke Weed by digging it all up and pouring white vinegar and liquid soap on the soil. They came back a year later. But with an addition! Wild, very thorny, blackberries now adorn the field fencing along with the pokeweed. Thank you native birds.
We have something called Ragweed here. They also are a rhizome type and almost impossible to get rid of. The ragweed makes me sneeze from Spring into Fall. The plants can grow 4-to-5 feet tall, very invasive, hard to pull up, and spread its seeds far and wide. Another similar plant, we call “pig weed”, of the Amaranthus family, grows prolifically in poor soil. The cows will eat the tops of the plants with no ill effects, however the plant can quickly take over a pasture if not mowed down quickly before it goes to seed. I do not use any herbicides or chemicals on my land, so the only choices are to pull up or mow continuously.
On the other hand, the native GoldenRod plant is absolutely wonderful for its health benefits and I have learned to harvest the golden rod leaves and flowers every year, dry it, and use it for tea. One benefit is that it promotes kidney health. I do love it, but it is also invasive. Elderberry is another plant whose berries I covet and it grows freely and prolifically here. I try to save the Elderberry bushes wherever they decide to grow. Lambs quarter also grows prolifically and can take over an area quickly. It can be used in salads and as far as I know, it is not harmful. The chickens love it.
At one point, I downloaded a plant identification app to my phone and went around taking pictures to identify each plant. “Are you a good plant or a bad plant?”, I would ask. In any case, they all had to go out of the garden area because I was losing the battle.
I decided to invest in garden ground covering (a.k.a., landscape fabric) since it was unrealistic to continue competing with stubborn native plants by hand. I purchased the kind that comes in rolls from Home Depot. It supposedly suppresses the weeds, but lets rain through. After mowing and hacking everything down, rolls upon rolls of the covering were stapled down. I then encountered a couple of problems that Spring. High winds whipped through the area and tore up every last one of those strips of ground covering. I sloshed through the mud, gathered them up, gathering the staples that I could find, rolled them back out, and stapled them back down, often on my hands and knees. Then another storm came through, ripped them up, and tossed them onto the neighboring land. Sigh…. I retrieved them and laid them down again. The Spring storms receded and the sunshine came out. I had been careful to overlap the rolls by 6 inches, but lo and behold, the native plants found their way around and through all the ground covering faster than I could plant the garden.
When I went to pull weeds, they had woven themselves into the ground covering material and the ground covering came up with the weeds, often tearing in the process. Arrrgh! I decided to do more research and discovered that many organic gardeners used vinyl tarps (heavy used billboard vinyl) to kill the rhizomes. The best method described was to cover the soil in the Summer/Fall, and not pull up the vinyl until Spring. The vinyl was not cheap, but it worked. Underneath, the plants were seemingly dead, but the rocks remained. I don’t know why I thought that would solve the rock problem, but maybe it’s because I couldn’t see how many rocks there were until the plants had all died. Nothing I planted could grow in that soil. By the way, once that “dead” soil experienced sunshine and rain, the native plants grew back! What to do…
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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