It's challenging to have a fully functioning vegetable garden at the backyard in Northern Nevada. It's so hot and dry in summer and the first frost date comes early, usually in the mid September. Also, the last frost date is hard to predict.
In addition of that we have a harsh climate for plants, our property is mostly clay. Well, it sounds like the end of vegetable gardening, but I really wanted to grow vegetables myself like my grandmother did. She used to make organic vegetables in her garden. I can't forget the taste of her vegetables. They were just so delicious!
We moved to a new house with a small backyard in the end of May, 2013. I wanted to start vegetable gardening as soon as possible, so improving the clay soil was not my option. I chose a raised garden bed and a double dug garden bed. My husband built them. The hard part was digging. The clay was compacted and so hard to dig up. Also,we found that the clay soil has a lot of rocks in it. Soaking before digging helped a bit, but a big shovel didn't work much. My husband went to Home Depot several times to get right tools to dig in.
Here are our finished raised bed and double dug bed. He removed the clay soil and filled the space under the beds and raised beds with potting soil.
