This spring I decided to try garden boxes instead of fencing in an area in my far back yard to grow vegetables. I found some cute ideas for raised garden beds on Pinterest and my husband went a little over the top with them, but I love how they turned out. I'm not the most amazing gardener but I do like to grow things. I love watching some amazing, food bearing plant come from just a little seed planted in the dirt. I planted tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, squashes, watermelons, celery, spinach, lettuce and peas in the raised garden beds. They are growing at an alarming rate and I have been able to harvest quite a few zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and peas already. My spinach went crazy and overtook a couple of the beds so I had to completely harvest, boil and freeze that already. I still have a few lettuce plants left, I also had to harvest some of them because the spinach just killed a couple off. I think the fresh garden soil we put in the boxes had alot to do with the plant abundance. I'm hoping I can get close to the same production just with fertilizing the soil prior to planting. It is hard to tell but the boxes are made from Western Cedar which is supposed to have a long life without rotting. We also covered the ground underneath them with garden cloth to help keep grass and weeds from growing up against them. I plan on putting decorative stone around them eventually but I haven't yet gotten to that. The boxes are two 6" panels high and have 2"x4"'s in each corner iand int the middle of the panels for support with 2x4's also as the top edging. Coated deck screws were used to build them. These boxes are 3' x 7' and are pretty big compared to what I expected. I asked for two and ended up with 4. Like I said, "Over the Top" but I am quite satisfied with them. I got the idea for the garden beds from First A Dream Blogspot; it is the 5th image down with the framed lids that have the screen on them. I plan on adding that to these next growing season, now that I know to plant less and get more. We will be using PVC framing for the lids instead of wood and use garden netting instead of the metal screening. That way I hope to keep out the bugs that I had some issue with this season. I don't use any pesticides and only organic fertilizers so that I'm not feeding my family chemicals. That is the primary reason I wanted these gardens. Unfortunately I am still having trouble getting my children to love vegetables as much as I do. Above are some photos I took from my gardens this morning to share with you. I did pick the zucchini today and have had at least 10 of the summer squash so far and it's not even the end of July!! I really like the raised beds much better for weeding as well. My knees and back don't love being on the ground to weed anymore so it is much easier to have the raised beds.
Sunset is another blog with useful info on raised garden beds. I hope you enjoyed today's blog entry and I would love to have you back for the next. Have a wonderful day!!
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Hello!I'm Michelle, a wife, mom and full time graphic designer. I have been working in graphic design for over 20 years. I like to share things about my everyday life and projects I'm working on. Hopefully some of what I share can be valuable to you as well. You can learn more about me here. Archives
January 2022
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