So, you want to know something about me. Well, first, my name is Neil. I was born in San Diego and have spent nearly all of my life (60 years) in Southern California. My grandfather (my mom’s dad) was the gardener in the family, though he lived in Colorado. I spent a few summers and my 6th grade year there with him and my grandmother. I was a kid so didn’t really pay too much attention to the gardening, but I did watch when he planted, irrigated, weeded and harvested.
I really didn’t get into serious vegetable gardening until about 5 years ago. We now live in Riverside and have lived in our house on a half acre for nearly 26 years. The ground here is DG (Decomposed Granite). Shortly after we moved in I bought a 35LB Makita Demolition Hammer so I could dig holes to plant things. Having a garden at that time was out of the question. The back half of our property is a hill and even fruit trees had difficulty surviving. Between the gophers and the incredibly hard ground, the trees really had no chance. It’s beyond me how those blasted gophers can dig through rock like they do when I have to have a jack hammer to get through it!
Anyway…About 5 years ago I decided that my wife and I (we don’t have any children) needed to start growing our own food, or growing as much of our own food as possible. I researched organic gardening and raised bed gardening and decided to cut out an area on our hill for 6 4′ x 8′ raised beds. We didn’t have a lot of money so I couldn’t afford redwood or cedar, so I used 2″ x 12″ x 8′ Douglas Fir knowing that I would have to replace it in a few years. There was about 3″ of somewhat decent topsoil that I set aside to put in the bottom of each bed and the rest of the ground I wheeled away and dumped on another portion of our hill. I then made my first mistake. I bought a lot of those large compressed bags of Kellog “garden soil” from Home Depot. Hauled them up the hill and dumped them into my raised beds (**See my section about SOIL**).
Over the years since I built those first raised beds I have added 6 raised beds in my front yard, gained a lot of knowledge about soil, amenities, pests, seeds, and many other things about growing vegetables. I don’t know it all, but I want to share what I do know and when I learn something new. And, I want others to share their knowledge too.