The Garden in 2016

In late December 2015 to early January 2016, I had a tree service trim my live oak in the front yard, create a root barrier around that oak, and trim the water oak in the back yard.

While that was going on, I planned a configuration for new garden beds. Using sticks and string, I staked out the space for seven identical beds with their northern ends a few feet from the back fence. I eventually decided it would be too much trouble to reconfigure the S Bed into two two straight beds, so I kept it more or less the way it was.

Before the tree service left, they dumped a lot of wood chips on my driveway, and I spent the better part of a day spreading them around the spaces I envisioned for my new beds and along the back and east fences.

I also tried to work out a space for an eighth bed running perpendicular to those beds in an area that is now mostly part of the processing area. Instead of string, I used logs to define area for that bed. Having eight beds would have let me follow the eight-bed garden rotation described by Houston's Urban Harvest, here.

In early February, I started building the raised beds. First, I built the one closest to the water oak in the photo below. I would eventually call it Bed 1. That took a lot time and effort. I selected the lumber as carefully as I could, but it was all still warped some varying extents. Also, the ground was not level, so I had to level it as best I could by creating a base frame with 2Xx4s and moving dirt around until the frame was more or less level. I ended up attaching 2x4 stakes to the frame and leveling it semi-independently of the ground, then filling in dirt where there were gaps. Once that was done, it was relatively easy to place 2x12s on the frame and screw them to the vertical stakes.

After I finished Bed 1, and especially after learning to cost of having soil delivered, I figured I could live with only four raised beds. I also abandoned the idea of an eighth bed.

On February 19, 2016, I had 20 cubic yards of soil delivered to my house for the raised beds. It was all dumped in my driveway, and I had to work a couple full days to move the soil into the bed frames, even with help from my eastern neighbor on the second day.

I had plenty of soil left after filling the raised beds. I used it to add a shallow bed at the eastern end of the yard, replacing the old bed that was there. I started calling it the I Bed. I also added soil to my herb garden and bare areas of the S Bed, and I made mounds along the back fence for my trellises.

On February 28, 2016, I started sowing seeds and planting transplants. It is easy to see where I worked by the patches of wet soil.

Later that day, I moved the concrete blobs from the old arbor and one of my bird baths to the southern ends of the raised beds.

Click the photo to see it bigger!