Making Your Bed

Saturday Free Class Notes
Yesterday's class on veggie gardening may have gotten some of you in the mood to plant, and the rains over the past few days are probably seconding the motion. What is one to do, however, if they haven't got the space for a big ol' garden?

MAKE A RAISED BED!

A raised bed offers more benefits than "your friend" from college, and the relationship is likely to be more fruitful. Let me explain. Remember how in "When Harry Met Sally" Carrie Fisher wanted nothing to do with her fiance's wagon-wheel coffee table? Well, your neighbors probably feel the same way about a jolly green vegetable garden sprawling all over your front yard. Tomato cages and large piles of cow manure are just the things to make a neighborhood association go Martha Stewart on your behind.

A raised bed is more chic. It reeks of sophistication with its log cabin corners and linseed oil

perfume. You must protect your wood. Pressure-treated wood in a vegetable garden is a questionable option, because it can leach arsenic.

ARSENIC?! If you think I'm eating any of that bull...

I found more perspective on this issue here. For those of you who think that perspective is for sissies, by all means, click here. Anyway, raised beds contain the lushness of a vegetable garden in a neat little frame. It's like the French say, "Je voudrais un potager."

I can't grow anything. My soil is for shizzle.

Don't worry. You see, Savannah's soil is sandy. It actually needs shizzle for stuff to grow. In a raised bed, you can add that and more. Mixing soil amendments in your raised bed will make you feel like Tom Cruise in "Cocktail." Except, of course, that your bar is a bed and the booze is, indeed, the shizzle.

I'd probably kill all of the plants anyway.

You know, it's just that kind of attitude that made them replace Olivia Newton-John in "Grease 2". Of course you're not going to kill the plants. What are you, the Godfather? You've got us on your side! Bring us your baggies full of leaves, etc. and we'll diagnose them for you! We're very good at identifying bugs, fungus, and diseases. Better yet, we can prescribe treatment, because we are the shizzle too!

Still not sure? Watch this.