After assembling the beds, I moved them out to the awful yard circle and put them in about a hundred different angles in order to take advantage of the sunlight. As you can see from the photo, the circle of lawn was useless. I mean, hey, if it doesn't smell nice, look pretty, or if it can't be eaten, preserved, canned, juiced, cooked, frozen, sliced or diced...I don't have any need for it in my garden!
As soon as I had the beds placed, I put several layers of newspaper over the grass at the bottom of the beds. I'm amazed that, now a year later, I've had NO weeds in my beds...none.
If there is one thing to not skimp on, it's dirt. I got the best organic soil I could afford and had it delivered. I wanted to follow the recipe in the Square Foot Gardening forums, but couldn't locate vermiculite, so decided to just go in on really terrific soil. I haven't had any problems with it at all. Although, sadly, I am NOT a math genius, and let us say, three yards of dirt was oh, a tad too much.
I hauled it all to the back yard, and what was left over got tossed around in the front yard and even in my neighbors yard. In retrospect, I must say, I never, ever want to move that much dirt again in my life. I will hire large groups of men to roll to my house and haul it for me if it ever comes to that again. I spent many an hour with ibuprofen, arnica and bath salts after the three days it took to get all that dirt moved. ISH!
