Where Do I Start? Newbie Gardener.

We have just moved to a new home and finished some of the building works on the house, but the home comes with alot of land and we would like to start some raised beds, but we need to know where to start.

Can anyone point me in the right direction - PLEASE.

The land is over grown with grass, so what would be the first steps?

 

Hi grahamg :wlcm: :wlcm:

Where to start? Well, you don't say how much land you've got and what you hope to achieve .... eventually. If you're really starting from scratch, I'd suggest the first thing you do is decide what sort of a garden you'd like - all flowers? flowers and some veggies? trees (fruit or ornamental) etc. and, you might want to factor in a place for a greenhouse too. Once you've got a broad idea, I'd make a plan of your plot drawing in roughly where you want the various areas/sections/borders etc., to be.

If you're going to put in raised beds you'll want to be fairly certain they're in the right place ('cos you 'aint gonna want to be moving 'em any time soon!). As for the practicalities, personally, I'd start near the house and work outwards. Decide where your bed/s is/are going to be and how big, clear that bit of ground of the grass, weeds, roots etc., dig it over well, and start building. You can worry about the type of soil, it's pH etc., when you're ready to plant.

Just as a BTW - if you've got a really large plot, you might, at some point, consider hiring a rotavator which could help with breaking up the top couple of inches of soil but they're not cheap, can be pretty hard work and you'll still have quite a bit of hard work to do afterwards - just a thought.

 

Fidegetsmum, sorry :o we have 2 1/2 acres and we are looking to put veggies in 1/2 acre in several raised beds with one raised bed for flowers. This way we can manage it.

A local hire company hires rotavators fairly cheaply so that is a really good idea - thanks!

 

Good evening Graham and welcome to the site. I am just being pedantic, but, why do you want to use raised beds when you have 2 1/2 acres you can use?:gnthb:

 

sorry, I should have mentioned there is a restriction that we cannot use the 2 acre plot as a garden/veg patch :cry:, this is why we intend on using the rear half acre to have raised beds, our property has farm land all around so I thought (maybe wrongly) that raised beds were the way to go, keeping rabbits and other animals out.

 

Ok, let me get this straight. You bought a property with 2 1/2 acres and can't use 2 acres of it for a garden veggie patch?????? Well, WHY NOT. ????
Raised beds, yep, lots of extra work. You can just as well till the soil and fence it off much easier. Just add manure and lime to soil before the winter sets in and next year the soil will be ready to go. Then we can talk further.

Sorry to ask a stupid question, buy why buy land you can't use????

 

Interesting John, humm. Over here there are protected places, protected from building on it, or roads etc. But it can be worked other ways, gardens, fields of corn etc. Its just to save the open spaces.
Well learn something new everyday.