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Hello all!
I hope you had a chance to check out my post about starting our garden! I wanted to share with you the fun additions we made this year.
To start, we had some crazy winter weather that resulted in our fence falling down (not the garden fence thank goodness) and us having to put in a new one. As unfortunate as it was, all I could see during the entire the entire process of tearing it down was the GARDEN BED POTENTIAL! So of course I told my husband immediately to save me as much wood as he possibly could (I'm sure he thought oh great, what are we getting into now) so I could build more raised beds. We had already decided we weren't going to add any new beds this year because of the cost but HELLO FREE WOOD that literally fell into our arms, how could we not.
So with all of the leftover fence boards and 4 x 4 posts we were able to build SIX new beds, and honestly our son is at such a fun age that building the beds with him was such a treat.
With the costs of beds comes the cost of soil of course, which honestly can cost just as much as the beds BUT I had been working hard all winter to save money on soil/compost and will share more on that in another post.
To breakdown what we build:
One large 5' x 5' box for pumpkins.
Three 5' x 1' boxes, two for tomatoes, one for flowers (on the front porch).
Two 5' x 1.5' boxes, one for watermelon and one for cantaloupe.
I would have built more but most of the wood was in pretty bad shape and falling apart, but I am so pleased with what we were able to build.
We had enough extra wood that we put wood on the bottom of all of these boxes so they can be moved and will be safe from underground vermin EXCEPT the pumpkin box, we just lined it with cardboard so fingers crossed they make it, so far so good.
I was so excited to add five new boxes to the garden and for the new flower box on the front porch! YES I am aware they are far from beautiful but they were free and built by my family and I couldn't ask for anything better!
NEXT UPDATE, we will call garden beautification!
The garden is covered in a layer of thick cardboard with wood chips on top but after going through a stormy winter the wood chips have blown everywhere and the cardboard was exposed and of course new weeds were popping up all over the place so it was time for a refresh. See the madness below.
So we got 40 cu. ft. of wood chips, I used the weed eater everywhere, and then we started spreading the chips. I quickly decided we may as well extend the wood chips all the way over to the pumpkin bed (bed next to scarecrow in above photo) in front of the stairs. SO WE DID, but first we put cardboard down....are you surprised.
The whole project only took an hour or two and the garden looks so refreshed and lovely after.
I think the whole project cost about 50 bucks in wood chips from Lowe's, if you have a truck you could have picked up the wood chips by the yard somewhere for a lot less money I am sure.
The last garden update is the addition of berry bushes!
I ordered three thornless blackberry, three logan berry, two blueberry, and one gogi berry plant from Stark Bros. So far we have received one of the blueberry bushes and the gogi berry plant (seen above). The rest are due to arrive later this month and I will do a post all about them once they are planted. Can't wait!
I hope everyone's 2020 gardens are going AMAZING. It is so great to grow your own food, and have fun doing it!