Take a peek at my garden today

[chilesprout]

Very nice! I bet it will be green and lovely this summer.

[EmeraldSkye]

My husband is talking about doing the final 3 beds... then it will be complete! That is, until the stone beds collapse. Then we will finish those up with wood. Truthfully: hopefully they will last because they won't rot.

[Sister Fearless]

Wow your beds look FANTASTIC!!! Is it just you and your husband building this?

I love the stone!!!! I hope it last for you!!!

[Sister Fearless]

Originally Posted by Lochlainn

what a beautiful garden ! I love the newly built raised beds Not sure if you like the look of it or not, but you could put some landscape fabric down (or cardboard) to prevent weeds, and then put down some gravel or some nice river pebbles. Another option could be straw. At the end of the season you could just rake all of straw up and add it to the compost pile then lay some fresh straw down in the spring and repeat the process. Another option could be to make some trips to your local river and over time collect some nice flat stones to eventually lay into all of the paths

I love your advice.
You give me courage to even think about putting paths down around my beds. I still have grass growing around mine. But I think we are wanting to sell our place in the next few years, and I sometimes wonder if a front yard garden is a selling point for quick sale?

[EmeraldSkye]

Hey, Sister Fearless, yes my husband and I built these ourselves. We purchased 2"x12'x16' boards for the sides, carefully loaded them into his old beat-up 4Runner, and brought them home. The assembly was actually not difficult. Getting the boards home and unloaded was the hardest part.

And yes, I believe a nice looking gaden in the front would add to the curb appeal of your home when you decide to sell it. At least it would for me! But nice, well-cared for grass looks good to, does it not? But if it's sparse and weedy then maybe not. As you can see by my pics, I have no grass or anything in my paths. This space was a small vineyard when we bought the property so we didn't have to remove any lawn. But we did have to remove diseased grape vines which may have been even harder!

[EmeraldSkye]

Oh, as for the stone: that is some leftover Eldorado stone (fake engineered stone) that was sitting around for the last 2 years after we built our house. I decided I may as well make use of it and tried to build 2 beds. I had to put a lot of stakes in place to hold the sides together. In time it may become more of a stake wall, or maybe if they fall down I'll learn how to do a better job rebuilding them.

[EmeraldSkye]

Yay!! I wasn't able to put the pictures in the message body because the Albums on this site aren't working like they used to. But I found a hosting site that does what I need it to. So, just for fun, I decided to put the photos here:





What fun!!

[EmeraldSkye]

So, we have been very hard at work. I am exhausted every night. But in the end I will smile every time I look at the garden!

We have built the third bed. Each bed we treated with a waterproof seal. Then I will line each bed with black plastic to help resist eventual decay. I did one box already. The other two boxes will get lined once I am able to shift the soil enough to get it off the walls. I'm trying for that "effeciency of motion" thing and would like to move the soil just once. So I have lined one box and screened the rocks out of the soil that was already in it (we kind of built the boxes around mounds of soil.) That is now done and it is about half full so I will then screen enough soil out of the "middle" box into the "far" box, line the "middle" box, continue screening all of its soil until it's completed, then shift some of the soil out of the "near" box while screening it. When I get THAT box lined then I will start to fill the boxes with the soil I have been removing from the paths to level them. Amongst all of this I have been digging trenches and my husband has been laying PVC for the watering system. Phew!

Here are some pics:

My husband is assembling the PVC for the "far" box:


In the photo below you can see the screened vs. the unscreened soil. I am using the screen that you can see leaning against the end of the raised bed. It's just over 3' long so it rests on the walls of the bed perfectly while screening.


Here are a couple of pics of the trench I dug today to water the first (closest to the yard) bed:


This one's hard to see because of the shadow. It terminates at the raised bed:


I am also considering adding a 2"x4" border around the top of each box. It will serve to hide the edge of the plastic, discourage water from getting in between the plastic and the box, and also will be a place on which to set tools. I'll update this when I get more done.

[bunkie]

wonderful plans and pics ems! keep them coming!

[SherylGallant]

Looks good! That's a lot of work, but well worth it in the end!