Raised Bed

We put in a raised bed a couple of weekends ago, and then planted some herb starts in it last weekend.

The purpose of this garden is for kitchen herbs and salad greens and it is about 15' from our back door. We're going to have three garden areas - the main one further back in our yard and about 600 square feet - the small kitchen garden of about 30 square feet - and another garden for vine plants like pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, and watermelons of about 250 square feet. We're also going to try growing some corn and sunflowers in rows in a different area.

For the raised bed kitchen garden we used cedar 1x10 planks -dimensions 8.5' by 3.5'. I connected the corners with little metal corner brackets, and then just bounded some 20 inch 1x2 pine into the ground to hold in the middles of the long planks.

For the soil, I started with cardboard to kill the grass, then a layer of wood mulch, wood chips, and chicken droppings, a layer of old horse poop, a layer of soil that had been below the horse poop and compost area, and then an area of soil we dug out of our yard.

Here are some pics:

Cardboard and chicken wood chips down.

After layer of wood mulch is down

After the horse poop and soil are down - layer of wood chips around the sides of the bed for later use. Bed is basically complete.

It rained a lot the week after I built this, so I wound up putting down another load of soil since it had already settled. We then planted some herbs in the soil. However, it has been so rainy and cold, I don't have a lot of hope for these herbs. We'll replant some more starts if they die over the next few days.