Pot, Chicks & Hoes: Setting Up My Raised Garden

One thing I have always wanted was a vegetable garden. Last year we saw some great raised gardens on sale at Costco and Joey bought me not one but two! There they sat for sulking under our rickety stairs. When we had our deck put in they were moved in their boxes to the middle of the yard and I decided it was time to do something about it. Well, I had a little help. Joey was eager for me to try gardening so he hinted (strongly) that I should put them up. Two weekends ago I did just that.

These Lifetime Raised Garden Bed Kits are fantastic. Each kit comes with two 48"x48"x9" beds that you can use separately or you can stack on top of each other to make an 18" high bed. I chose to stack mine because, as you can see, I put them on cement. Also, Grandpa here doesn't want to have to bend so low! Besides, Joey got me two kits so I should make the most of them. They were super easy to put together and stacked right on top of each other. Another cool feature of these is that they have a clear plastic dome you can put over them to protect your plants. We got a great deal as Costco on these last year, so if you see them there snatch them up.

Before filling my bed with soil I wanted to line them with some good quality landscape fabric that we bought at Home Depot. This will all the beds to drain, but prevent the soil from running all over the place. The roll is 4' wide and I cut two cloths about 5' long so they went up the sides a bit.

I decided long ago that I wanted to try Square Foot Gardening and this requires a slightly different soil than what one usually uses called "Mel's Mix" after the man that invented the technique. Mel's Mix consists of 1/3 Compost, 1/3 Peat Moss, and 1/3 Vermiculite. This combination of supposedly keeps in the moisture while allowing the plants to breath. My gardens each required six cubic feet of each. That worked out to two bags of peat moss, two compost and three vermiculite.