Finished Raised Beds

As of last night Jeffry and I have three completed raised beds filled up with dirt and connected to irrigation. We ordered the dirt on Sunday with a planned delivery of Monday afternoon. In our excitement to fill in our beds and get to planting, we didn't think about the fact that the weather forecast was calling for rain on Monday evening, Tuesday and Wednesday. Once we got home and realized our foolishness, we decided we'd just have to set straight to work the second we got home Monday to get the dirt into the beds before the rain. Even though the wheel barrow had a flat tire, Jeff managed to get the largest raised bed filled up during his lunch break. When I got home I grabbed a couple of five gallon buckets and shuttled dirt from the driveway to the beds while Jeff fixed the tire. It sprinkled on us a bit, and for a while I felt like Dorothy as the wind picked up speed. Luckily it only took us about an hour working together to get all the beds in the front yard and the wine barrels on the side of the house filled up. It made our pile small enough that we could cover it with a tarp and then we headed inside for some hot showers and a warm meal.

Getting dirt delivered in bulk is definitely the way to go. It cost us a little under a dollar for a cubic foot instead of $1.95 for 3/4 of a cubic foot at Wal-mart, and the place we ordered from was just up the street so there was no delivery cost. That cost difference is a big deal when you're ordering 100 cubic feet of dirt! We will be ordering some bark from the same place in the next couple of weeks to fill in around the raised beds.

Some good things to know before you go shopping for dirt: know exactly how much you need and take a calculator. I had calculated how much we needed in cubic feet, but they sold it by the cubic yard. Jeff and I felt quite silly when we were trying to figure out the math and originally thought that there were only nine cubic feet in one cubic yard and left because we thought the landscaping company was a rip off. Oh did I feel ridiculous in the car on the way home when I realized how wrong we had been. In case you are wondering, there are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard, not nine. Math is not my strong suit alright, but at least we got it all straightened out in the end. I felt extra silly though when we had to return to the place five minutes after we just drove off.

Raised Beds Part I

As I mentioned in my last post, Jeffry and I plan to turn our front yard into edible garden space this spring. Since Fall I've been dreaming up different configurations and ways of setting up our garden, wanting something that was both pleasing to look at and functional. Finally we settled on "The Perfect Raised Bed" plans which are available on Sunset's website. I like that they are low profile, made out of lovely redwood and have built-in removable row covers to keep out the large number of wild birds which like to call our little plot home (how our neighborhood has both millions of stray cats and millions of wild birds I still haven't figured out). Hopefully we can find alternatives to using the row covers since they aren't very attractive, but its nice to have the option.

Another fear of mine was that having big rectangular boxes in our front yard would look harsh. I think having them only be 1 foot instead of 2 feet tall combats this somewhat. In addition, I have decided to scatter some wild flower seeds on the ground sort of willy nilly next to the raised beds. I am also thinking of getting either mint or thyme ground cover to plant next to them. I think adding a little wild unplanned feel to them will help soften their impact on the yard. The flowers will also help attract beneficial insects to the garden. I'm not sure how well all of this will work in actual application but hey, wild flower seeds are cheap and the experiences that experimentation brings are priceless.

After spreading a bit of time in the front yard with some wooden dowels and some bright orange surveying tape (that yes went right back into the emergency kit) I decided that we could fit three raised beds on the left side of our yard. They're measurements will be 8' x 4', 7' x 4' and 6' x 4' with the longest one being up by the house and the smallest by the street. I decided to make them progressively smaller to fit in with the meandering path we have doing down the middle of our yard.

It only took us two weeks or so to get around to it (first Jeffry had to sand one side of all the boards to get rid of some unexplained stains), but we finally have the first one built. It still needs to sit for a week or so before we seal the outside of it because we happened to get some of the freshest wood in the world and it needs to dry out a bit first. I did give us an excuse to clean out the garage though because we have to store this big sucker in there while we continue to make two more! I'll post more updates as our little construction project progresses. Thanks Jeffry for working so hard to indulging all my crazy projects!




*UPDATE: Since I wrote this post earlier today another raised bed has been constructed! Jeffry and I were apparently full of energy this evening and decided to bust out another raised bed after dinner. We had two drills this time so things went alot faster since we didn't have to keep changing from a drill bit to a screw driver head. The above picture is of the 7' x 4' bed we just finished building.