Green Fingered Gardener - Introduction to Raised Bed Gardening

Figure 1. Freshly picked homegrown vegetables will fill your heart with pride.

That perfect looking, store bought tomato awakened a memory that set me on a journey - a quest to reproduce some of the delights that my grandmother grew with such nonchalant ease. She was extremely proud of her vegetable garden and it was always filled with a seemingly endless variety of edible wonders.

I wanted to reproduce that garden and all the adventures that went into creating it. The trouble was, I had no idea where to begin. The large scale migration to cities and the transformation of our society that we have witnessed in the last few decades has seen a rapid demise in the gentle art of gardening. Today we pick up nearly all of what we eat on a quick trip to the local supermarket or greengrocer. Somewhere along the way, the very natural process of growing our own foods was transformed into a mystery a dark art that many seem to believe is beyond the reach of all but trained specialists.

The objective of this book is to guide the reader on a journey similar to the one that I have been on for so many years now. Along the way I hope to show that gardening is neither difficult nor complicated. My grandmother had no horticultural training and was still growing much of her own food until she was well into her eighties. Using her notes and the additional information I have gathered over the years, I have put together this book to show just how easy gardening can be.

My desire is that this series of publications will do more than just teach you how to grow your own healthy and nutritious vegetables. I hope that, as in my case, you will become more concerned about what you eat and the processes that go into producing that food. As farming has become more industrialised, and as we have placed more and more responsibility for our food production into the hands of large corporations, the food that we put into our bodies, and the bodies of our children, has changed. Vegetables are now chosen for their shelf life and their visual appearance rather than for the nutrition they offer or the taste they provide. Much of what we eat will have travelled thousands of miles before it reaches our plates and all the way along that journey it is shedding its level of nutrition.

If nutrition levels and flavour were the only losses in these giant production processes, then it might be a price we are prepared to pay in exchange for the convenience offered. Unfortunately that is not the case. To a large extent, it is the environment that carries the burden of our desire for convenience. Don't think that the perfectly formed tomato that travelled several hundred miles to reach you is the result of careful plant husbandry and exposure to the best that Mother Nature has to offer. It will almost definitely have been grown in a greenhouse using an obscene amount of chemicals and unsustainable quantities of water. Those poor souls that picked and packed it for you will probably have been paid a subsistence wage, whilst working on tenuous contracts all this so that you can have gorgeous looking produce at a low price, whilst making fortunes for large conglomerates.

I believe that growing your own food is so much more than just a matter of putting food on the table and saving yourself a few pennies. It is a passion, an art, an exercise and an act of rebellion against a system that does not have our best interests at heart.

You can join that rebellion. This series of books will guide you through the growing process from start to finish. As one book builds upon the information that you gained in another, you will, almost by accident, find yourself developing a broad-based horticultural knowledge. You will learn the tools you need as well as those that are just nice to have. You will follow the growing process from soil preparation, right through to harvest, with a little bit on storage and preservation thrown in for good measure.

Above all, you will learn that gardening is not a lost art that disappeared along with our great grandparents. It is really very easy and requires little more than some basic techniques and a smidgen of enthusiasm. (If the enthusiasm is lacking dont worry it will soon grow).

Figure 2. Passing on gardening wisdom.