plant a vegetable garden

Still have those pesky two beds to finish filling, hoeing and planting, but in the meantime I’m weeding (again) and mulching (finally!). It sure makes them look a lot better with the weeds gone and some nice dark mulch in. Some of the peas and cucumbers are starting to come in.

Of course, listening to a gardening bit on NPR’s ‘Talk of the Nation’ yesterday, I found out that raised beds can be two feet tall (my gardening book said go for 6”, so that’s what we did—two feet would be soo much easier on my back!) and that if you want to protect from moles digging up under your plants, you can put a reinforced wire down under the beds (would have been nice to know before we did all this!) Soo, those things are now on next year’s gardening to-do list. My poor hubby (he gets to split the heavy work with me). :P Still, it’ll be nice when it’s all done.

Got three more of the raised beds leveled and planted, and two more almost ready to be planted. Hopefully I can get something going in all of them before the planting season is over here.

Got all the beds constructed, all but three moved into place and filled with dirt, and four of them actually planted. We have a very few already sprouting. We should be able to finish up this goal fairly soon.

We got all ten of the raised garden beds nailed together and positioned, then found we actually had space for two more, so we ran out got the supplies for those and finished them today.

Next comes the leveling out of the soil. The area we want the garden to go in is on a bit of a slope, so we have to even that all out. I’m not sure if we’re going to try to make it stepped or just flatten the ground out directly underneath where the beds go. Anyway, it’s going to be evilly hard work.

Almost forgot to mention that I recently found some concrete form molds that let you pour concrete to look like pavers. That should save a lot of bucks, especially now that I’ve got 4’ walkways between the beds (we doubled the planned size so that it would be easier to get a wheelbarrow thru them).

Whew! Two more 8’x4’ raised beds nailed together and positioned (it’s harder than it sounds), then I went to price paving stones for the walkways between the beds. Looks like it’ll be a minimum of two-hundred eighty bucks, so that part’s going to be put off for a while. That’s not too bad though, as it looks like we may have enough room to enlarge the pathways anyway, so I might as well wait to see how wide they’ll end up being before I go buy stuff.

We’ve got 3 of the 10 raised beds nailed together and tentatively placed and the places plotted out and marked with twine, so not too bad thus far. A couple more days of work and it should be in.

We tilled up the ground where I’d like the garden to go, and I’ve gone out and bought the wood, stakes and nails that we’ll need to make the raised beds I’d like. Today I just need to get out the measuring tape, a few stakes and twine to mark out where stuff is going to go. Hopefully it won’t rain on me too much. :)