Fall leaves and a new garden

This picture (of bagged leaves) pretty much sums up my weekend. The good news is that in addition to raking, I also managed to see Adam's band play a show for the Halifax Pop Explosion, go out for breakfast at one of my favourite spots, watch a really terrible movie (Love and Other Drugs) and make a delicious dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday. The bad news is that the raking isn't done yet.

In between raking, Adam and I also started to build raised beds for next year's garden. We learned a lot planting our first garden this year, especially that we need a location with more sunlight. So we decided to create two raised beds in the middle of our yard, which has the added bonus of giving us (really Adam) slightly less area to mow. We purchased some spruce boards at Home Depot and had them cut down to make two 4' by 6' frames. Adam sunk three screws into each side and voila, we had our frames.

The next step is to level the frames by removing some of the sod, so we won't have any drainage issues when we plant our garden in the spring. The frames are 10 inches deep (you need about 6 inches for a veggie garden) and we'll use newspaper to cover and smother the grass, then add the soil from last year's garden on top. We're also going to try forking some shredded leaves into the soil, which will help attract earthworms and other good-for-the-garden organisms come spring (or it will do nothing, either way we've got leaves to spare).

I think we're going to try making leaf mould for next year, which sounds disgusting but is actually a really good organic compost. From what I've read, you just store leaves in black garbage bags for a year or so, and I really like the idea of putting our leaves to work instead of just getting rid of them. Have you ever tried it? Any advice?