Garden Bed Construction

I did it! I made the garden bed today. It took about 3 1/2 hours from start to finish, which could've been shorter if I'd not had technical difficulties with the power drill.

So here's a picture of the area before I got started:


First I cleared out as much of the weeds and dormant mint branches as I could. Then I laid out the landscaping fabric. It's not easy to keep the landscaping fabric in place when it's windy out. It's ALWAYS windy in Frisco.

Then I started screwing the 2x8s for the sides of the bed. This part should've gone a lot quicker than it did, but I had some difficulty with the drill. I also made the mistake of putting two of the boards on the inside of the posts, instead of having all four on the outside of the posts. More about that later.

Then I was ready to fill the bed. I decided not to follow "Mel's Mix" to the letter, mostly because I thought it would take a lot of running around to get the ingredients for it. I calculated that I needed 24 cu. ft. of stuff to fill the bed, and I wanted to use equal parts vermiculite, compost, topsoil, and peat moss. I went to Calloway's this morning with the kids to get vermiculite (I figured they'd have it there). Well, they did, but they only had three 10-quart bags of it, at $8.99 per bag. Ouch! More money than I'd expected for less material than I needed. And I had no idea how to convert quarts to cubic feet. (BY THE WAY, Daddy, I just looked it up and 10 quarts is 0.334 cubic feet. Now we know!) So I got the three bags of vermiculite and three bags of perlite, which I hoped would be a good subtitute. Then it was off to Lowe's for the rest: three bags of compost, one large and one medium bale of peat moss, three bags of potting mix (instead of topsoil), and one bag of composted cow manure. I ended up not using all of it. The final amounts are:

• 6 cu. ft. potting mix (3 bags)
• 6 cu. ft. compost (3 bags)
• 3.8 cu. ft. peat moss (1 large bale)
• 20 qts. vermiculite (2 bags. I didn't use the third bag; I'll probably try using it for seed starting)
• 16 qts. perlite (2 bags; the vermiculite and perlite together equaled a measley 1.2 cu. ft.)
• 50 lbs. composted cow manure (1 bag) BONUS: the "Special Offer" on the bag of manure is to send in the UPC label along with $5.95 and you can have your choice of either a t-shirt or a cap with the Black Kow brand logo (a cow, naturally) and slogan, which is "The Mature Manure". I think this is EXCELLENT and I can't decide if I want the shirt or the cap. Help me decide, readers!!

Mixing all that up was FUN. (That's a little sarcasm.) I was worried about tearing the landcaping fabric with the shovel while I was mixing all that. I really do NOT want to be weeding mint out of my garden bed this summer! Anyway, I eventually got it all mixed up nicely.

Here's the newly filled and mixed bed:

Finally, I was ready to mark off the squares for planting. This is when I discovered that thanks to my lack of foresight in how I placed the 2x8s, I was losing about half a row of squares. So instead of a nice 6x6 bed, it's more like 5 1/2 x 6. No matter; I'm giving the row of half-size squares to my daughter so she can plant some flowers. I was going to put them in the center of the bed but this will work out just as well, and her squares will be right where she can reach them.

Here's the final result!

I'm so proud of it! I can't wait to see it filled with veggie plants this summer.