I've been dreaming of raised vegetable beds for years.
Or precisely, since I was 11 and discovered that I liked gardening. That spring, mom had declared that there was not going to be a vegetable garden - you know, something due to her being pregnant - and I realized that my goal in life that summer was to have a vegetable garden. And that I would miss pulling weeds. Well, not really. But I realized that there was more to gardening then pulling weeds. Since then we had various incarnations of mounded beds, or at the least, nothing but weed cloth laid on the ground with holes poked in.
But this year, unbeknownst to me, was destined to be different. God had heard my prayers.
In April we realized that our shed needed to be resided. The siding (batten wood) was failing to keep out mice and all sorts of nasty critters and had to come off. Well, if you're familiar with batten wood siding, you know that it consists of wide planks (about a foot wide) battened down with narrow strips. Well, the narrow strips weren't much good for anything but the wide planks, usually sized one foot bye eight feet, were/are perfect for raised boxes.
So... Tah Dah! We now have eight beautiful raised beds in the vegetable garden, and four flower boxes near the shed.
Today, Hannah came over and we got the pea trellises up, did some weeding and planted some squash and cukes. You can't really tell in the picture below, but we are using a bent over stock panel as a trellis for the cucumbers and squash. Hopefully, it should work!
I'm also being particularly ambitious by weed clothing everything. :) Should pay off in a month!
So I posted this and then realized I should give credit to those who deserve it. First off, I think Jacob and Daniel helped with almost every single box. They're pretty awesome! Andy certainly helped with at least half of them, and Scott, I think, built the first two, plus he did the majority of work tearing them off in the first place. Also, all the younger men helped with pulling out the original nails, which was rather tedious. I wasn't able to do a lot until yesterday but since my neck is doing so much better now I actually got contribute by doing the chop sawing. I now have a lovely sunburn, thanks to our last push to get them finished. I think we made five of them in an hour and a half!
Or precisely, since I was 11 and discovered that I liked gardening. That spring, mom had declared that there was not going to be a vegetable garden - you know, something due to her being pregnant - and I realized that my goal in life that summer was to have a vegetable garden. And that I would miss pulling weeds. Well, not really. But I realized that there was more to gardening then pulling weeds. Since then we had various incarnations of mounded beds, or at the least, nothing but weed cloth laid on the ground with holes poked in.
But this year, unbeknownst to me, was destined to be different. God had heard my prayers.
In April we realized that our shed needed to be resided. The siding (batten wood) was failing to keep out mice and all sorts of nasty critters and had to come off. Well, if you're familiar with batten wood siding, you know that it consists of wide planks (about a foot wide) battened down with narrow strips. Well, the narrow strips weren't much good for anything but the wide planks, usually sized one foot bye eight feet, were/are perfect for raised boxes.
So... Tah Dah! We now have eight beautiful raised beds in the vegetable garden, and four flower boxes near the shed.
Today, Hannah came over and we got the pea trellises up, did some weeding and planted some squash and cukes. You can't really tell in the picture below, but we are using a bent over stock panel as a trellis for the cucumbers and squash. Hopefully, it should work!
I'm also being particularly ambitious by weed clothing everything. :) Should pay off in a month!
So I posted this and then realized I should give credit to those who deserve it. First off, I think Jacob and Daniel helped with almost every single box. They're pretty awesome! Andy certainly helped with at least half of them, and Scott, I think, built the first two, plus he did the majority of work tearing them off in the first place. Also, all the younger men helped with pulling out the original nails, which was rather tedious. I wasn't able to do a lot until yesterday but since my neck is doing so much better now I actually got contribute by doing the chop sawing. I now have a lovely sunburn, thanks to our last push to get them finished. I think we made five of them in an hour and a half!
1 comment:
yay!! This post makes me happy. Can't wait to see the garden. I'm serious, actually! I love going out into the garden with you, and even pulling the weeds. ;) Ah, memories! Remember when we went outside to pull weeds and I told you all about the guy I had met named Jason?
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