Fill 'er Up!

A rainbow on the day we filled the raised beds.

Now that the boxes are built, we have to fill them with something. Something that plants can grow in. Something that we can find in mass quantities. Something that is cheap-like. Something that is easy to get our hands on. Hmm.......  Is there anything at the city landfill we can use? Oh yeah there is! Beautiful free compost, glorious black compost, as much as you can handle. Seems that the city is doing something wonderful with all of the tree and yard clippings they collect weekly. Some may say it's not the best, I may even agree, but you can't do better than free!

Almost to the top!

Boy, can these things take alot of soil!

We did amend the soil with some composted cow manure and rock dust to give it some more nutrients. I was surprised by how much soil these boxes could take. You're looking at 1.5 pick up truck loads to fill these 2 beds. A big thank you to one of our amazing neighbors for the loan of the truck and wheelbarrow. Without which we would likely still  be starring at empty boxes in the yard.

Adding a little extra good stuff.

The Big Build

Inspected by Ruby the Bullmastiff

There are literally 89,435,768 ways to build raised beds. Google it if you don't believe me. I'll wait. See, told ya. Everybody has an opinion. My "expert" (you remember youtube) has all sorts of great ideas, from $300 for a 4x8 bed right down to using free scrap pallets to get 'er done. Cedar looks like it's the way to go but I can't see my bed costing more than my yearly produce grocery bill, so regular old wood it is for this girl. We decided on untreated wood even though we know it won't last as long as the treated version. The new treated wood is supposed to be safe, but I don't fully trust any wood that doesn't rot. Not around my edibles anyway.

We're going with 2 raised beds, each one 4x8 with some trellis sections for climbers. We'll use untreated wood, some screws, weed fabric and cardboard boxes. Total for wood, screws, trellis and irrigation at a big box hardware store was $130.00 for both boxes.  Here's how it looked coming together.

One down, one to go!

Sides built with weed fabric and cardboard liner

Ta da!