See Pictures Of Our Raised Bed Vegetable Garden

About a year ago we started a raised bed vegetable garden. A friend of ours who is a mason offered to make two raised bed vegetable gardens for us.

We were going to build them ourselves but when he offered we couldn’t say no. It’s really amazing that people offer to do this type of thing. I think it’s really important to have friends and neighbors who you can barter with and exchange services.

I want to say a few things about bartering and then I’ll get back onto our raised bed vegetable garden and our experience so far.

I think that an equel barter is one of the most ethical and honorable things one can do. We’re all caught in this quandry of the monetary system. Everytime there’s a transaction of real things like food or services, usually one party has money and gives it to the other party in exchange for a good or a service.

When that transaction happens, usually everything is tracked, logged and eventually submitted to the IRS for tax purposes. But when two people make an equal barter, no actual money (paper money isn’t really money anyway and it’s being devaluled at an incredible rate) is handled during that transaction. Guess who loses out? Mr. Taxman that’s who.

You see over the past 100 years, the value of the U.S. dollar has been decreased by over 92%. Every time the government prints more money, that means they actually devalue your skills, abilities and labor. What right do they have to tell you that your labor or skill set is worth half of what it was 10 years ago? That’s what happens every time the price of food goes up.

Inflation is really their way of saying, “Now you need to work 2 more hours per day to be able to buy the same amount of food you normally bought 3 years ago.”

But if you’re able to help somebody fix their car on your day off and they give you a bunch of food from their vegetable garden, there’s no money that changes hands and they don’t like that.

Think about it.

Two real things were exchanged, a fixed car and food. Money is not real. When money is linked to your time or job, they have control over how much you need to live. For that reason I’m always interested in a barter that’s reasonable and honorable that benefits both parties.

Back to our raised bed vegetable garden. When we got the raised beds from our construction friend, we bought some sea moss, worm castings, organic soil and some seeds from Seeds Of Change.

We really like the Seeds Of Change company. The first year we planted cucumbers, all kinds of salad lettuce, herbs like basil, cilantro and zuchini.

This year we’re going to grow some tomoatos and other herbs. We’re a bit late this season, but I’m really excited to grow some organic blackberries. They are one of my favorite fruits.

One of the most economical things you can do is to plant and grow foods that normally would cost a lot in the store.

Figure out what you like to eat on a normal basis and what items cost a lot in the stores, then plant and grow some of those things.

This website is really designed to share with your our experiences with gardening and living holistically as much as we can. Hopefully our experiences will help you get motivated to do the same.

Normally a raised bed vegetable garden is only slightly higher than the ground. Since we don’t have a backyard (we’re currently in an apartment with a patio that has no soil) we built our raised bed vegetable garden about waist high so that we didn’t have to bend over to tend our garden or soil.

This helps to save our lower backs so we don’t get sore. Our goal is to also have some grape vines and blackberry vines growing on the lattice that you can see in the background.

You may also want to look into a product called sea crop which is an organic way to help remineralize the soil which helps your vegetables reach their genetic potential in terms of vitamins and minerals. I’m also going to purchase some thalassa mix which helps achieve the same effect as well.

We are going to use rock dust, diluted ocean water and compost on our crops. There are many ways like using some of the products from Ron Cusson to get the most out of your garden and when we start implementing them we’ll be sharing our success with you.

I’m really excited about using rock dust on our raised bed vegetable garden to see what kind of yield it will produce. I’m also going to buy a meter for measuring how many minerals are in my plants. Stay tuned.

If you haven’t started growing your own food, I would highly encourage you to do so. It’s simply not a sustainable approach to be dependent on stores for your food.

You don’t have to have lots of fruit trees and grow lots of food. Just start by growing sprouts or fermenting foods. When we get into the habit of working with our foods, I believe we will be gaining momentum and motivation to continue doing more and more.

As our raised bed vegetable garden becomes more fruitful we’ll be sharing our strategies and techniques in the coming months in order to help motivate you to get in the game as well.