2021 Garden: Phase 2

This weekend, we got to work on our garden and this meant: building raised beds! We had planned to complete all of them, or at least get the supplies for them, but with lumber prices being way higher and our budget being tight…we decided to just get the supplies to build two beds. One for the onions I need to get in as soon as possible and the other for my lettuce I’m starting from seed soon.

One way we made the beds more affordable was to buy cedar privacy fence pickets. They were about $3.50 a piece, so way more than we were expecting but also not ridiculous. We used 2×4’s to create four “legs” on each end to put into the ground the level the bed.

Chris did a great job assembling the beds…especially considering we didn’t have plans for how to do these. He just made it up as he went and as usual it turned out great! The area we chose for our new garden is the most level in our yard, but it’s still downhill slightly, so I was excited to see what it looked like once he leveled the beds. Much more pleasing to the eye than the wonky way my other beds last year were laying. ha

After the bed was leveled, it was time to fill ‘er up! We used a soil combo recommended by one of our favorite youtube channels Hollis and Nancy’s Homestead. Its cow manure, peat moss, and soil. We used top soil from Lowe’s (and got the other two from there too). We aren’t planning on buying soil from the store for all of the beds because its EXPENSIVE. But we needed to just get these two done and it didn’t kill our budget in small quantities. We plan on finding bulk soil from a local farm for the next ones.

I used cardboard boxes to line the bottom to keep grass from growing through. I did this last year and it worked great. And it eventually decomposes so the plants can grow through it if they so choose. Then we added some limbs from the tree we cut down. It will take a while for those to decompose, providing lots of organic matter as food for the plants throughout the next few years.

We added some leaves from our pile we’ve been saving since the Fall. And then we added our soil mixture on top of that. And we were done with the first bed!

We didn’t have time to build the second one due to it starting to rain, but I’m hoping to get my onions in the bed by tomorrow. This is my first year growing onions and I’m nervous but hopeful I won’t screw it up too bad. ha

I’m so excited to have one bed down and ready to go! Gardening season cannot get here fast enough!

Check out our vlog of building the beds today.