Making the Raised Bed Garden

With Covid in full swing by the end of March 2020, my seed business required an expansion. Along with expanding my seed selection, I needed to add a garden.

A nearby family friend had a front yard that would be perfect for our use, except for the fact that they had no garden in the front yard. After talking with them about an idea, we settled on the idea that I could use a little area in front of their porch to build two small raised bed gardens in. The supplies would be easy to acquire from the local hardware store. So I went to the sites, measured things, priced supplies at the local hardware stores and brought the raised bed supplies to the front yard. The raised bed garden is made out of blocks and wood that are set into place with metal rebar going through the center of the blocks.

One of the funny parts of the whole experience was when I purchased the wood frame. For the frame, I purchased long 2x6 cuts of lumber. The cuts (probably 8’ long) were too long to fit in my van, so I used some seatbelts, along with some of the raised bed cement blocks to hold the back door of my van down so that I could transfer it to another friend’s home so he could cut the wood for me. Fortunately, by the time I purchased the wood I had already measured how tall a two blocks was, so I knew that the beds would have to be at least three blocks tall in order to support healthy summer plants.

The first raised bed I filled up with mostly bagged compost from the hardware store. After recognizing how expensive that was and how quickly it would degrade (mostly decomposed wood chips), I purchased 3 cubic yards of garden soil from a local supplier. They brought it in a truck and dumped in onto the driveway, where I slowly worked to fill in the raised beds until I had no more room. Then I used a wheelbarrow to transfer the rest of the compost the half block back to my backyard. 

 

By the time everything was said and done, I had spent a lot of money, but then I had the whole season of sun to work with.