If you check in on us today on IG you may have saw a little progress we made today on our new garden area. Last year we took a break form gardening because… well a cute little man named Cope came into our lives. Throughout summer we kept saying how much we missed it, but fall when all the pretty pumpkins and squashes would be ready for harvest, we were really sad. So first chance we got, we moved a little portion of our vegetable garden closer to the house to better keep an eye on it and make it more accessible from the house. Here is where we are today!

Before we talk about the garden beds we made, I want to talk about the area we cultivated before we put the beds in. So Jose cut out the sod with a manual sod cutter. We rolled that out of the way to reveal the top soil. Normally we would rototill this area, but we have underground sprinkling in this area, and really want to take advantage of a routine self watering schedule for our crops. Using a hoe and a trenching shovel we dug in to the top soil another 2 to 3 inches. We will add that top soil back in but once we lay the beds in place we wanted to add some organic matter to help with drainage and structure of our clay soil.

We trenched in another inch around the edge of our bare top soil, to allow for beds to rest in. This way the edge of our cut sod and trenched in area, will act as a wall, to keep our beds from bowing out with the weight and pressure of the soil from within.

The DIY garden beds are made out of 1″ x 8″ x 10′ cedar with a dimension of 2 feet by 10 feet. Nothing fancy when putting these together, just cut to length and screwed together at the edges. We did pre-drill these boards to help mitigate any cracking or splitting. For our soil we added to our preexisting clay soil was a pre-mixed, peat moss heavy, vegetable soil, along with some compost from our sheep. We simply built the boxes in place and then filled them with soil when they were in place.

The cool part about these boxes compared to other ones we built are the trellises we added. After moving the sheep around over the years, we had a few extra livestock fence panels laying around. So we placed them center of the bed and drove three t-post into the ground to attached the fence panels too. This was a great option for us, but also a great fit for the plants as they are structurally sound and won’t get pulled apart from our climbing plants. We already had these panels but they range anywhere from 14 to 18 dollars for a 8ft section. And T-Post are usually under 5 dollars per post.

With the trellises in we quickly planted our climbers. We added a full bed of a different variety of peas and a full bed of our smaller tomato varieties. The next beds we will cage our larger variety of tomatoes and our root vegetables. And lastly leave the last one or two beds for our sweet fruits. After all was said and done, we realized we wanted to add small section for just Cope. We were thinking some repeat vegetables we already have in our big beds, but something just for him to go pick and as he grows how fun, educational, and special it’ll be to have his own little garden beds. We are so excited.

Well that is a quick recap/update of our garden beds so far this year. We fully plan on cleaning up our old garden and getting out there for our flowers and other things, but all in time. Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today and every other day it means so much to our family. If you are fellow garden lover, what are you growing this year? I love learning what people find important for their gardens, to learn and maybe add new plants to ours. Thank you again for stopping by!

Xx Liz Marie

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