Location, Location

My plan is to create a raised bed in my backyard, close to my house. There's an existing "bed," I guess you'd say, up against the house that is usually overrun with mint and other random plants leftover from the previous owners' landscaping efforts. I'm not a landscaper so that bed has really gone to ruin. I'm hoping to redeem it, to some extent, with my kitchen garden.

The bed features a pergola that used to have a rampant trumpet vine. The roots of the vine persist, and have sprouted up in all kinds of places in and around the yard, but the pergola has been cleared of the vine for a couple of years now. My dad pointed out that the pergola posts would make a great frame for my bed, and I can use the overhead slats to tie up my strings for training my vertical plants. Thanks for the great idea, Daddy! It will save me a lot of money and efforts to use the existing frame to create my bed, and it's putting that unsightly area to good use.

So here's how I'm going to do it:

1. First, I need to cut down the dead mint stalks and clear out as much of the leaves, etc., as I can.
2. Next, I'll put down black garden plastic to prevent weeds, the mint, and the trumpet vine from sprouting up in the garden bed. I'm sure they'll just sprout around it, but I'll deal with that.
3. I need four 1x6 treated wood panels to screw into the four vertical pergola posts. This will make the four walls of my garden bed.
4. Finally, I need to fill the bed with the proper planting medium. (More about that later.)

I'm reading that I need to be careful about what kind of treated wood I use to build the bed, so that nothing leaches into the soil. I'll need to make sure I ask the guys at the hardware store about that...

Pictures coming soon!