Our Raised Bed Garden
Over the past two weekends, Lauren and I put into action our plan to start a garden. It started last week with us cutting down two juniper bushes and a hemlock and destumping the earth in order to put in a container garden. The stump pulling was tough work, but it was fun to get dirty and work up a sweat.
Yesterday, we ran some reconnaissance for reclaimed untreated lumber. Lauren put out an APB to her contractor friends and we located a couple of stashes of scrap lumber. We picked up a flexcar to go pick up the wood and right next to the pickup location, there were some dudes framing a house. She went over and talked to a dude that didn’t speak any English and we managed to get a bunch of nice pieces. Then we headed over to some other job sites and scavenged more scrap. Finally, we picked up a bunch of old-growth wood from a renovation project in a friend’s turn-of-the-century home (that’s the brown wood in the photos).
After getting the wood, we got to work on the boxes using a jigsaw that we got at a garage sale for $1 a couple years ago and a box of nails we also got from a garage sale. We managed to nearly finish the first section out of three before we had to head out.
Today, we got up to beautiful sun and singing birds and church bells and went to town on the second two boxes. Our neighbor saw us struggling with the jigsaw and offered us his circular saw which saved us a ton of time. We also borrowed a level from him. What a nice guy.
Part way through the day, a couple minutes after we broke for lunch, it started raining, so we had to move our operation to the garage. We managed to bang out the last walls and level it off (for the most part) by about 5 o’clock, just in time to have friends over for dinner and the Sopranos. We ran out of time to get the dirt to fill in the beds, so we left that part until tomorrow.
Not including the dirt, we spent a total of about $5 for the nails, some electricity for the saw, and gas for the car, to build our garden. I think it looks great and as long as it doesn’t completely collapse when we put dirt in, I’d say it was totally worth it. We’re planning on planting a couple different varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, beans, lettuces, herbs, and maybe a some other things if we have room. It’s going to be a great summer when I can pick beans off the vine and eat them raw. Mmmmm…
More photos can be found in the album.
Update:
We got a bunch of dirt and filled it into the raised beds. It took 3 trips and 3 yards of dirt with the flexcar pick-up. We got a little too much, but we’ve got plenty of pots and other planters we can use it in. We were charged $25/yard for the topsoil. Seems like more money than it’s worth, but who am I to put a price on earth.
