my new garden!

My dad was recently in Seattle for a visit.  Really, he came to work. For four days, Dad, David and myself worked on my new raised garden beds!  He got in town on a Wednesday and we spent Wednesday night talking over and working through the design.  On Thursday we went out and bought the cedar, and David and Dad spent the rest of the day and into the night putting the three beds together.  In total, I got three new beds, each about 4' by 6'.

 It was probably 11pm on Thursday night when dad and David carried the three boxes up to the yard in the dark.  On Friday, we woke up and saw it was a beautiful day and there were three beautiful garden beds in place.

 TA-DA!  These are the beds before they were sunk into place, leveled and filled with dirt. 

 Look at the Craftsmanship on these boxes!  Dad and David out-did themselves!  They are wonderful. (Dad and David and the new beds :)   )

 So, on Friday we rented a dump truck that had a capacity of 3 cubic yards of dirt.  We went to Pacific Topsoils and bought two yards of their garden mix soil.  Just fyi-two yards of soil equals about two tons in weight.

We brought the dump truck and dirt back to the house and then had to spend a few hours settling the boxes into their places, leveling them up, and making sure they were properly terraced (each is just a bit lower in elevation then the one before it).

In this photo, Dad was already hauling dirt via buckets, and I was finishing up the garden cover system.

 The PVC pipes were attached three to a side to enable me to put covers over the garden so that I can extend my growing season in the Fall and begin it earlier in the Spring.  We attached the posts onto each box, although I doubt I'll be using all 3 boxes in the off-season.

 We also set each of the boxes up with a hose so that we could install an irrigation system. 

 Here is a box before we filled it with dirt.

 And here are all three boxes full of dirt.   Two yards of dirt was the perfect amount for the three boxes.  We all hauled dirt, back and forth, back and forth, one bucket in each hand.

David got the job of shoveling the dirt out of the truck bed into our buckets.  At first I thought he had the easy job, but then I switched him for a bit and quickly conceded that the shoveling was definitely harder than the hauling.  My back was sore after only filling up 6 buckets!

 Post-hauling happiness!  Beds are ready.

 Since we had that monster truck, we went back and bought two yards of mulch to mulch around the beds (where you see bare dirt in the photo) and re-mulch the rest of our yard.  It was a good thing we got the dump truck because it was time to take the truck back before we had completely unloaded the mulch, so we pulled the truck around to the front and dumped the rest on our parking strip, to be distributed later.

 This is the garden cover system I mentioned above.  We used a smaller diameter PVC piping that fits into the posts we installed. This allows me to attach some clear plastic sheeting when it is time to extend the gardening season.

 Dad and Sam enjoying the fruits of our labor.  This must have been Saturday morning before we went to the garden center to buy plants and seeds.  You can see that the mulch is spread around the sides of the beds in this photo.

 Here is the first of three beds with irrigation tubing installed and plants planted.  This bed is the easternmost bed and contains spinach, romaine lettuce, kale (left to right) and Brussel sprouts (along the top).

 This bed currently only has buttercrunch lettuce, sage, cilantro, but is spaced to eventually contain a cherry tomato plant, more buttercrunch lettuce (planted from seed every couple of weeks), basil and bush green beans.

And finally, the westernmost bed currently has beet plants, some cilantro that looks like it might not make it, and some rainbow chard.  Soon I'll plant some cilantro and more chard (from seed), and some cucumbers  and two big tomato plants.  I'm going to try to train the cucumbers to climb up a trellis so I can save space in the garden.







The area where my garden used to be is where our pumpkin/squash patch will be.  I'll plant some butternut squash, zucchini, and 4 kinds of pumpkins (3 of which are edible).  David will be in charge of the pumpkin patch--making sure the vines don't go crazy and take over the top of our yard!

Dad bought a soil testing kit while he was here, and we tested our soil.  Turns out the PH of the soil is fine for what we will be growing.  But we are deficient in Nitrogen and Phosphate.   So I'll need to go get some fertilizers and work those into the soils to make sure the veggies have all the stuff they need to grow big and strong!