Growing my own food has long been a goal of mine. When I lived in Gainesville, I kept a fairly large garden, but traveled so much that it was never really successful. Since then, I’ve only been in short term rentals and never wanted to establish anything other than containers, which worked well but never produced much. When we were looking to buy a house here in Colorado, a backyard which could support micro-agriculture was a must. The house we settled on has a decent sized, terraced yard, but we didn’t want to devote the entire yard to gardens.

One day while browsing the gardening section at the book store, I came across Mel Bartholomew’s “Square Foot Gardening.” Perfect! Yesterday morning we drove over to a local cedar supplier and picked through their seconds pile and came up with enough supplies to build 6 boxes. Our Honda Element is a perfect utility vehicle for the urban gardener once the rear seats are removed.

Our back yard is on the North side of the house, but the NW corner gets a lot of sun exposure and seems like our best bet for gardens.

Having a garage makes these projects so much easier. The Delta chop saw I scored for free the other day at work is a bonus too.


Here is the work in progress. The picket fence will keep the dogs out of the compost and the beds. Buying the fencing was not cheap, but I really wanted an area free of dogs. We will be getting 4 laying hens soon, and they may reside in the new fenced area too if they can’t get along with the pups.