Still, I’ve decided to pursue it.

What I’m tackling right now is a raised bed.  Until a month ago I thought a raised bed meant you had to build a fort for the dirt.  You know, a wooden box that you would then fill with a topsoil/compost mixture.  If you didn’t, it wasn’t a raised bed.  But after reading two major gardening tomes (How to Grow More Vegetables… by John Jeavons and The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith), I now realize that the wooden box isn’t necessary and probably not even a good idea (though you’d certainly need it for a patio, or on top of asphalt, etc.).  Instead, if you have reasonably good soil (not a rock quarry or quicksand), you just double-dig an area (the web has lots of articles on it, so I won’t explain it here), and this “loosening” of the soil creates a raised bed.  After that, you’re pretty much in business.  A typical raised bed is 5 foot by 20 foot.  This gives you 100 square feet — and a lot of gardening stores seem to calculate stuff based on 100 square feet.  You can go shorter or narrower if you want, but the idea is to be able to comfortably reach to the center of the strip from either side.

The other big revelation I’ve had is that gardening is all about growing dirt.  That’s really your objective.  The vegetables are just a side benefit.  This means that you’ll devote parts of your garden to growing compostable material, or stuff that adds nutrients to the soil.  The objective is to eventually have a self-perpetuating setup consisting of a compost heap and several raised beds in which you rotate crops in a way that continues to improve the soil.  As for your raised beds, they will rise a bit more each year as the soil improves, and they’ll be able to “breathe” out their sides — if that makes any sense.  It’s better (and cheaper) than boxing the bed in with wood.

I’ve also learned that it takes years to develop really good garden soil.  It’s not something that can be rushed.  If you have clay, you can’t just add a bunch of sand or you risk ending up with something like cement, nor can you add straw and manure or you’re making bricks.  Adding amendments has to be done gradually, and the bacteria and other organisms necessary for good soil need to develop over time.  Theoretically, there will come a time when you don’t need amendments.  Your self-grown compost will suffice.  But before you reach that point, you’ll probably have to do regular soil testing and add amendments based on what you find.