A couple of years ago, I built my “east garden.” It sounds a lot fancier than it is. I started in the fall using old roof sheathing I’d saved from my re-done carport roof. I laid out the sheets in a roughly 20-by-14-foot patch. The next spring, I removed the sheathing and built five raised bed frames, each 8-by-2-feet, lined with wetted-down cardboard. For the pathways in between, I laid wood chips acquired from the Keene transfer station. I filled in the beds with a 50/50 compost topsoil mix from East Branch Organics. And I closed it all in with a fence made from sunken posts, chicken wire, 2-by-2-foot rails, and some deer fencing.
My wife said: you’re going to want it to be bigger.
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Last year, I signed up to participate in a compost study. Reber Rock Farm had a grant to supply a few area small farmers with compost and test the results. A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer Perry from Compost for Good stopped by my garden and took samples of the Reber Rock compost I’d used, primarily in my larger hoop house. I told her that it had performed amazingly well; I’d put it almost exclusively in the hoop house beds, with just a bit of peat moss in one for growing root vegetables. The vegetables had all done well, with the standouts being the spinach and zucchini. I’ve never seen spinach grow so fast or bright.
Read the full story in the Adirondack Explorer.