Everett Street Garden

Four friends from high school asked me to build them a garden in their backyard.  Adjacent to a large cemetery, I quickly found that the condition of the soil was going to be very easy to work with. Additionally, the spot we chose for the garden get's a serious 9-10 hours of sunlight daily (which can be too much for some plants) but is certainly a good amount of sun for a new vegetable garden.

Here's what the area looked like as I started to get the ground prepared.

After taking off the layer of grass and moving that aside to continue growing on the lawn, I forked the entire area to get some air and light into the ground.  Although I planned to build a no dig garden, I did want the bottom of the garden to be as arid as possible.

Next, it was time to start building up.  First, a few layers of leaves and newspaper.

Here's what the area looked like after a few layers of all that organic matter.  The inks from the paper might not be the best for the garden, but the paper will break down naturally over time and help condition the soil by keeping in additional moisture.

Finally, I built up small areas of soil where I planted the initial bunch of veggies; I filled in the other areas with leaves, knowing that I would be adding more soil, compost, manure, etc. to the garden in due time.

This is still a work in progress, but here's what the garden looks like most recently; currently growing in the garden: tomatoes (three varieties), capsicums (three varieties), green beans, snap peas, eggplant, parsley, cucumber, zucchini, watermelon, radishes, lettuce, arugula...