Raised Gardens completed with plantings

Sunday, June 15, 2014:

I am happy to say that the third raised garden bed is completed and all three of them are now filled with the load of top soil we had brought in.   We have the lumber cut and ready to assemble for a 4th garden but we need just one more 8-foot length of 4" x 4" wood for a post.

The dogs have certainly been confused as to what was going on but they are adapting like they always do.

Here's a little something funny.  I spotted a persimmon which had fallen off the tree (far from being full grown and ripe).  It looked like it had a set of ears.

We named this the Mike Wizowski persimmon from Monsters, Inc.  The part where the stem was attached is Mike's single eye.  Of course, the "ears" make it look like a Mike Wizowski Pikachu!  LOL!

All three gardens are constructed and all the dirt has been carted to the backyard and sits by the gardens in a pile.  Now, it is time to fill these!

We ordered 3 cubic yards and this was plenty of dirt to fill three 4' x 4' x 16" gardens. When we were shoveling the dirt into the first garden, we were a little concerned if we would have enough to fill all three.  The calculations worked out that we would have enough, but how do you measure how much they are dropping off if it is in the back of a small dump truck?  You just have to trust them to deliver the correct amount ordered.  This local nursery has a very good reputation and I didn't doubt them too much.

But it turns out that we had plenty with a good bit to spare....possibly getting another 4' x 4' x 16" garden filled from this load.

See the newspapers on the bottom?  We placed anywhere from 5 to 7 layers to stave off the intrusion of weeds and newspaper has another benefit.  It will decay after a few months and make the dirt richer.

Can't get that from that awful black plastic fabric cloth!

Needless to say, I haven't done a lot of shoveling like I used to and I had a few blisters develop on my hands.  But, oh well....that comes from not taking the precaution of wearing gloves.  I just kept working through the blistering and they were pretty much healed 2 or 3 days later.   "Just shake it off; you'll grow another one!" is what I kept saying.  And needless to say, my arms are a bit sore!

Just taking a much-needed breather here!

Started planting some bedding vegetable plants Saturday and Sunday (yesterday and today).  We have eggplant, tomatoes, celery, yellow squash and zucchini squash.    I want to construct another garden and plant the cantalope bedding plants.  

A fifth garden for green bean vines would be great!  I can fashion some teepee-like structures for climbing.

As physically demanding as this outdoor project was in the heat, it is a very good feeling to get this very involved physical project finished.  My initial goal was to make three of these gardens but I would like to eventually have six built.

A lot of credit goes to my youngest son Patrick, who helped me out with this project.  He was home too, so I put him to work.  

Oldest son, John was fighting a pretty bad staff infection so I could not have him help-he needed to heal.  

My husband was working full days but helped out when he could.

So, that 3 cubic yard pile was dumped in the neutral ground by the street.  Patrick and I got out there and after many, many wheel barrow loads later, we had the entire pile in the backyard next to the gardens.  I wanted to get it moved as quickly as possible since I didn't want my expensive dirt to start disappearing or washing away with the heavy rains which we were having. In fact, right after the load was delivered Tuesday, it immediately started pouring and we accumulated about 4 inches of rain that day!  But the rains didn't wash it away, thank goodness!

After bringing it into the backyard, it would have been ideal to just dump the dirt from the wheel barrow and into the garden.  But the garden walls were just too high for this.  So, we dumped it onto the ground and after the entire 3 cubic yard pile was in the back, we then shoveled it into the gardens. So, we actually shoveled that whole pile twice!

I did research on the internet as to whether or not to line the insides on the garden walls (not the bottom), with a plastic liner to stave off wood rotting from the soil.  But the more I researched the pros and cons of this, I decided against the liner since it promoted wood rot faster by trapping water between the liner and the wood.  So, scratch the liner and eliminate another step....Yeah!

Saturday, June 14, 2014:  We hit the store again and as usual, I could not help myself when it came to the bedding plants of herbs and vegetables.  I even found chocolate mint and stevia plants!   I had been looking for Chocolate mint and was glad I found some yesterday.  And it does indeed have a little "chocolately" mint smell!

I already had rooted a mint sprig from my ice tea from IHOP last year and had that plant established, but I have no idea what variety of mint it is.  I also bought recently at Walmart, some bedding plants for Peppermint, Spearmint and Sweet mint.   

I am going to pull up that rather annoying rubberized barrier.  I started to dig it out yesterday as you can see in the picture.

My oldest son, John busy cutting the grass in May of this year.  This is what the garden area looked like before.  See that area on the right?

Much better!

See my links to my other posts regarding these raised garden beds:

#1  http://crochetgottaloveit.blogspot.com/2014/06/raised-gardens.html

#2  http://crochetgottaloveit.blogspot.com/2014/06/another-raised-garden-bed-with-shelf.html

#3  http://crochetgottaloveit.blogspot.com/2014/06/3rd-raised-garden-completed.html