We Started a 1/8 Acre Garden… This Is Phase 1

Phase one in the garden. My mom is here helping me get some tape off some more boxes. We had a friend drop off a whole bunch of cardboard boxes. He works at a furniture manufacturer and I didn't want to use little boxes like from Costco. I brought some home and the space that I'm trying to fill is like an eighth of an acre and I thought there's no way with these little boxes. So I asked him and he was like yeah we get tons of boxes so we brought a trailer full of these massive boxes. I've taken staples and tape off of a lot of them and we're laying them out. My mom's helping with some now. The point of this is to cover the ground because it's going to kill weeds. So once we cover the ground with the cardboard we'll put some wood chips from that giant pile of wood chips over there on top. That will slowly decompose over time but in the process it will kill all the grass and weeds underneath. So the goal is hopefully to have no weeds coming up in our garden, our raised beds or any in-ground beds that we do here. So this is phase one, get everything covered in cardboard and wood chips and then we have some beds to put together. It's a 82 degree high today so of course my little bro wants to get in the sprinkler. All right let's do it. You want to set it up where you want to set up, like right here? Gotta go peek up right here. Whoa Cohen watch out bro! I always think that like our kids need the like water slides and the crazy sprinklers that are rainbows and you know have different spouts and things that spray all over the place because those are exciting and fun. But it turns out that just a simple $20 sprinkler from Amazon is all it takes to bring a little bit of joy into their lives. So we don't always need the fancy expensive super cool things. The kids can really appreciate just anything. Did you fall down? Oh my goodness! Are you okay? You want to go wash it off in the sprinkler? Just stand in front of it let it wash you off. It's like 80 degrees which is making this harder than it needs to be but I'm so close so it actually is it's really supposed to go... you want the truth? I envision it going double this length eventually but probably not now. Probably I'm gonna start here with this. That seems wise doesn't it? I'm just gonna I am gonna go down past this pile of logs. I need to move those and just finish out the rest of the cardboard I have and then we'll expand on it later. But it probably would be wise to say let's start here and we can always go bigger which to be honest this is plenty of room I think for no no no I might need a little bit more room. I'm thinking for the raised beds that I have there's going to be blackberries two rows of blackberries and raspberries and then we'll have raised beds with trellises that you walk through one two three um and then way so I might need to keep laying cardboard which I already yes I need to keep playing cardboard but I might need to continue down trying to visualize how far apart these things will be. I really need to measure it um I probably need to at least come down at least to here that's what I would think. I was going to go down to this tree just like another 10 feet we'll see what happens. Down past this tree it was going to be maybe like corn um I would like a little cornfield little corn plot uh and a plot of asparagus and I would like to do potatoes and potatoes in ground so potatoes corn asparagus I'll do in ground in their own like plots like probably a rectangle plot for potatoes and then a square for corn and asparagus next to it so that'll be down that way. I'm not super worried about that right now um if I don't get to that this year then it's not like the biggest deal but we will I might just end up tilling some soil amendments into the clay down there instead of doing all this this is really just to keep the weeds out. I might lay cardboard too like till amend some cardboard we'll see if you have suggestions for corn asparagus and potatoes. I know potatoes like to grow on the ground but I'm telling you this ground is not it's not soil it is hard compacted clay so I definitely need to break it up if I'm going to do potatoes. I don't know about corn and I don't really know about asparagus so let me know all the info you have on those things. All right back to work y'all I don't even know what time it is but I have been out here all day I went inside once got some crackers and cheese for maybe 10 minutes. I have drinking plenty of water today though so I am proud of myself for that. Anybody else have trouble drinking enough water? All right this is where we have ended not quite as far as I wanted to go but the rest of the cardboard that I have still has tape on it so that would need to come off before we lay it down because we don't want plastic in our garden we don't want plastic um I was hoping to get past can you see that blueberry bush let's walk over there all right ignore ignore the junk below this last blueberry bush is what I was hoping to kind of come past I told you guys before I told you guys before I really would like to go at least to that tree with this garden bed that has um the woodchips down I will make another longer video I will make another video maybe going more in depth into this method if that's something you guys are interested in hearing about or learning about but the whole idea of all this work on the front end and what looks like absolute silliness because it's all brown and dead doesn't look like much of a garden yet but the whole point in it is that once we have added compost and soil and our raised beds filled with all the good things all of this wood as it slowly breaks down will hold a ton of water so when it's really dry like it has been in North Carolina that wood will release the water and and keep your plants hydrated and living and keep all of your stuff thriving even without watering it so that's the idea is is put in a lot more work on the front end to be a little lazy later this will eliminate most of the weed issues this will eliminate the need to water it like crazy um I feel like that's the hardest part of a garden just kidding I don't actually know what the hardest part is yet but this feels pretty hard this has been exhausting uh but I told John like this is end vision this is like a step towards it instead of like starting just small and doing this and then moving it and changing it later I kind of wanted to map out what I would love for it to look like at the very end and then just take the steps to make that happen um and the wood chips were free and the cardboard was free so all it's cost me right now is sweat and aching body um but feeling really good getting a lot of sun and vitamin d so all right I'm gonna call it a day uh it's been wonderful gotta go inside and probably clean up a bit I have no idea what it looks like in there I stopped in earlier when my girls got home from school and I asked them to help with a few things usually they're pretty good about that but tomorrow I have to run to Costco and get things for our Passover celebration and then come home set up a tent out back and maybe piddle around here and try to get some of these raised beds put together I'll see you guys later