Preparing for Spring

We got a little head start on next years gardening, by building an another raised garden bed for our yard.  I wanted more space to be able to plant a few more veggies and spread things out a little more.  I've planted things too close together, so our garden is very crowded.  For example, I don't follow the directions when the little instructional tag says plant things 18" apart, its more like 9".  This year we had strawberries, a couple tomato plants, two zucchini plants and carrots in our garden.  Too much for a 4' x6' garden!  I want to be able to plant more and try out new things, so Chris and I built an additional 4' x 8' raised garden bed.

4' x 8' Raised Bed

What we used:

9 - 2 x6x8 Douglas Fir Boards - $41.13 for nine boards at Lowe's
1 - 4x4x8 board - $8.22 at Lowe's
Wood Screws - Already owned these
Thick Black Plastic Sheeting - Found in the paint section for around $9 and we have a lot of extra.
Spray Wood Stain - Found on clearance at Michaels for around $3
Drill
Staple Gun

First we started by cutting three of our 2x6x8 boards in half, so we would have six, four feet boards.  Then we cut our 4x4 in four pieces, in lengths of 18 inches for the corners.  We only needed 6 feet of the 4x4, so we had a couple feet left over.  Next we laid out all the pieces to begin assembling our raised bed.  We started with the shortest sides of the garden first and attached the four foot pieces to the 4x4's.  After we had each four foot side done, we stood them up and attached the eight foot boards.

I found some spray wood stain on clearance at Michael's for around three dollars and was able to spray the raised bed with one can.  It is a pretty close match to what is on our other raised bed.  I cut some black plastic approximately 18" wide and lined the interior of the garden to give the wood a little extra protection.  I used my staple gun to attach the lining.  Then Chris and I used our muscles and moved the raised bed to where we wanted it.  That sucker is heavy!  Then we filled the garden with the sod Chris had dug up from our backyard landscaping project.  We are hoping the sod composts some, so we can use it for gardening and our lawn next Spring.  I've added some food scraps to the pile and done my best to mix it in with the sod.  When we put the sod into the garden bed, the stuff at the bottom seemed to be composting some.  But, it's an experiment so we'll see how it works. The new raised bed definitely cleaned up our yard by containing all that sod.  Before it was just in a pile in the yard and looked very messy.  We added mulch around both garden beds to sync it up with the rest of your landscaping we did this summer.  It's looking pretty good if I do say so myself.  I'm looking forward to having more space to grow more goodies next year.

Happy Champagne Thursday!

Cheers!