Garden Type : Home-Gardenbook Member Journal

Garden Type

IN GROUND TILL

You must have a well drained area into which you can dig 12 inches.
You must be certain that there not are any underground pipes or lines within 18 inches of the surface. You can check with your landlord (which you should before considering an in ground garden or any garden) or if you own the property then check the city, and/or utility companies. Most pipes and lines are deeper than 12 inches but you don't really want to get closer than a foot from them.
Your area should have at least 50% of the area that receives 6 or more hours of sunlight. There are solar meters available online and in the garden center or you can conduct your own check from sun up and sundown using lawn chairs or any easily moved marker to keep track of when your garden's areas go into shade.
You must be physically able to remove weeds and grass from your area and keep them relatively free of weeds and grass. If you aren't you will need a friend or relative or someone selling chorework to do this for you.
You must be physically able to till the ground to a depth of 12 inches either manually or have access to a garden tractor or tiller and the ability to operate same or have someone to initially till the ground for you. This is a rather strenuous task but only has to be done once a season. There may be folks in your area that can do this for you with a tractor or tiller.

NO TILL ABOVE GROUND

You must have a well drained area where you can pile soil to a minimum depth of 12 inches
Your area must not lie in a water flow area where the soil is likely to be washed away quickly and the runoff soil that is washed away must not flow into a drain where it might clog the drain.
You must be physically able to move garden soil, compost and other amendments in large quantities to you garden. In smaller gardens tis may mean simply the ability and access to wheelbarrow in 80lb bags. In larger gardens it will probably mean access to your garden area by a truck with multi yards of soil and soil amendments and the physical ability to shovel and carry them and pile them in rows.

RAISED BED

You must have a reasonably well drained area where you can construct or erect raised boxes or other barriers into which you can pile soil, compost and other amendments. Areas that flood often or often have standing water more than a couple hours after a rainstorm are not suitable for raised beds.
You must be physically able to construct or able to pay for someone to construct raised beds from non toxic materials.
You must have access to your beds and be able to physically carry and/or shovel the needed volume of soil into the beds. The formula for determining how much soil is needed is the width x length x depth. For example a bed that is 3 feet wide, 6 feet long and 1 foot deep would be 3x6X1 or 18 cubic feet of soil. If you buy your soil by the bag at the garden center then it is usually sold in 2 cubic foot bags so you would need 9 bags to fill you raised bed. Now the weight of each 2 cu foot bag depends on whether it is potting mix (light at about 29 lbs usually) or compacted dry top soi (about 80 lbs usually or, heaven forbid, wet top soil which can easily weigh 120 lbs. If we figure that you will probably mix garden soil, potting mix and compost then you probably will average about 60 pounds a 2 cubic foot bag so you would need to be able to handle about 540 lbs of soil to fill one raised bed of 3feet by 6 feet by 1 foot deep. One foot is a bare minimum depth for a good raised bed that does not have the soil underneath tilled to a depth of some 8 inches or more.

Here is a simple cubic foot calculator.