Hi all,

I am new to the forum, but not new to gardening. When I started, OGM had an article about "cardboard gardening" and that is what I started with. Well, the bermuda lawn had other ideas and actually invaded the 5 rows of compost on the cardboard, but I still grew enough corn to eat fresh 3x per week (family of 3) and put up enough to have corn on the cob each week in the winter. The tomatoes produced a bazillion between the slicers and the cherries. The peppers managed to outgrow the bermuda too, so we had awesome red and green bell peppers for cooking in the summer and I roasted and froze in oil enough to get through the winter using them 2-3x per week.

At the end of that season, I sat down and started doing research on the internet and thought about what worked and what didn't and why it didn't. But, being the queen of cheap, there was no way I was going to spend money to have the garden I truely wanted. Making my own compost in some wire cages I made from recycled decorative wire fencing was the first step that I had taken the year before (that is where the compost for the cardboard came from LOL), but I realized I would need MORE, MORE, MORE compost than what I could generate from my property. That was the birth of my raids for grass clippings in the neighborhood

So, now we are at the beginning of the next spring and I decided that garden weed barrier (the black plastic stuff with the white fuzzy back) would be an acceptable expense. <face palm> So, I bought a garden claw and got the spade shovel out and went to work on a 10'x10' garden bed ... many hours later of digging and pulling bermuda roots, I was ready to pull apart the compost piles and work that in to the new bed. There wasn't much color difference in the red clay soil after the compost, but there was plenty of organic matter and that was a great garden that year. My only problem was trying to lay the weed barrier on a day when the wind was blowing 30mph and not having enough bricks to form a line of bricks end-to-end around the edges of the plastic.

So, not only do I scrounge the grass clippings in the summer, and fall leaves in the fall, I will not pass up a pile of brick or rocks ;D Drives the old man absolutely CRAZY LOL I also bring in cattle panels, fencing, and anything else metal or plastic that I think I can use. Once you start looking, you would be amazed at what folks will throw away! I also scored a bunch of old railroad ties that had been leached in the weather. And, a few years ago, a internet-buddy talked me into not using the garden plastic and using solarized grass clippings as mulch. OMG, the savings in water, the health of the plants, and the reduction of heat-stress on the plants when it is 100+ every day for a month solid with no rain!

I now have the original bed at 12'x50' with chocolate brown soil (not the red clay I started out with!), another bed at 11'x40', and a third bed at 9'x21' all on my small little city lot. I have gone from opening a can or frozen bag 2x per week in the winter to opening at least one can or freezer bag of vegetable from my garden 4-5x per week. When I started in 1995, you could still find DelMonte cans on sale once a month 4/$1.00 or 6/$1.00 ... now you are lucky if you can find them for less than 75cents sale price. A gallon of milk back then was $1.25/gallon and now it is $4.00/gallon! Water each month back then was $30 when I watered the lawn each week and the garden 2x per day, now it is $65 per month with only watering the lawn once per month and mulching with grass and using soaker hoses.

The biggest savings from my garden is the peace of mind I get as that is "MY TIME" and no one bothers me when I am out there watering or harvesting LOL The hours of therapy I didn't need! The hours I didn't need to spend at the gym.