New Raised Garden

Yesterday Mariko said to me, “I have on my calendar written that you were planning on making the raised garden today.” Oh yeah. I vaguely remembered saying that. Well, I had the afternoon with the kids, so I might as well spend some time out in the back putting together the raised garden. Bay and I made a quick trip to Home Depot to get the supplies. We got the wood cut to size (they never seem to charge for extra cuts beyond the single one you get for free), but at checkout I was shocked to see the price. However, when we did a search online for pre-fab cedar garden beds with similar dimensions (11’ x 4’ x 11"), we found that they ranged from $300-400. So we actually saved quite a bit of money, and the cedar planks I got were about 1.75” in thickness and have held up quite well in the other beds we’ve made.

Since I made this kind of raised bed before, yesterday’s construction went smoothly. In fact, I didn’t have any problems at all! It was a really nice experience too. They afternoon wasn’t too cold, the kids played nicely, I had a couple of cold beers, and the baseball game was streaming on my laptop. The hardest part was making sure the ground where the frame would end up was level, and even this went smoothly and quickly. At this point, I was thinking that this was going too easily. The only thing left to do was move the frame from the patio into position. It was pretty heavy, and having another person there would have helped, but the frame went down into the dirt without any problem. It was almost too easy! (Now I am really suspicious of what will go wrong)

When Mariko got home, I had already cleaned up the tools, had the kids done with their homework, and was enjoying my third or fourth beer. She looked outside at the new garden bed and said it was beautiful. Woohoo! Success!

Next step will be to add some good dirt and have it ready for planting. It will actually take quite a bit of dirt to fill, but maybe we can just do a portion of it. I have some extra wood laying around that I can use to section off the bed, so that is an option. When it comes around to planting, we’ve decided to have the kids take care of their own sections of the bed, and decide what they want to grow. I’m excited about my own section, and have some plans which involve lots of peppers and hopefully cilantro. Yes, I’m thinking salsa! But we’ll see. Anyways, I’m planning on spending some more time out in the backyard this summer, and taking care of the garden is pretty fun.