As Spring approaches, I've been toying with garden ideas for our new home. If you recall, we have this weird "garden" around our A/C that I wanted to utilize somehow, but it seems dirty to plant vegetables in the ground around an A/C unit.
Space last summer:
Ick. No thank you. We removed all the plants and awful split rail fence.
So I started casually looking for some raised beds like this bad boy here:
This bed, from Amazon.com, runs $180. I asked my husband if he thought we could build it for cheaper, not thinking too much of it at the time. Until I came home from a girl's day out to this:
Obviously this is horrible lighting and it's not quite finished, but you get the idea.
Then he built another larger, deeper bed for tomatoes:
So right now, the larger bed is in place, and the smaller bed is waiting to be leveled in, but those pesky strawberry plants are in the way....
Now, in the background toward the right you can see some strawberry beds:
Our hope is to transplant the thriving strawberries to this new home in Spring, then put the smaller raised bed in their place, to the right of the A/C unit. I spent this weekend removing two bushes from this spot, so now all we have to do is move a shitton of rock and level out the ground so they are flat. I plan to attempt the strawberries, but also use one of these for lettuce and herbs.
Lastly, we removed a crappy flower bed last fall that was on the fence adjacent to these beds, so there is a small dirt pile ready for planting (roughly 4x10?). However, I'm worried that the fence might cast too much of a shadow, so I'm going to do a shadow experiment (catalogue when the bed is in shadow or full light by time of day, fancy I know). I also want to test the soil, since that was something we never did in our old house and I feel it might be worthwhile. 1. Make sure there is nothing scary in the dirt (read: lead) and, 2. Know what soil amendments it might need.
Current To Do's:
Space last summer:
Ick. No thank you. We removed all the plants and awful split rail fence.
So I started casually looking for some raised beds like this bad boy here:
This bed, from Amazon.com, runs $180. I asked my husband if he thought we could build it for cheaper, not thinking too much of it at the time. Until I came home from a girl's day out to this:
Obviously this is horrible lighting and it's not quite finished, but you get the idea.
Then he built another larger, deeper bed for tomatoes:
So right now, the larger bed is in place, and the smaller bed is waiting to be leveled in, but those pesky strawberry plants are in the way....
View from front (please ignore shadow, covered patio is to the left):
Now, in the background toward the right you can see some strawberry beds:
Our hope is to transplant the thriving strawberries to this new home in Spring, then put the smaller raised bed in their place, to the right of the A/C unit. I spent this weekend removing two bushes from this spot, so now all we have to do is move a shitton of rock and level out the ground so they are flat. I plan to attempt the strawberries, but also use one of these for lettuce and herbs.
Lastly, we removed a crappy flower bed last fall that was on the fence adjacent to these beds, so there is a small dirt pile ready for planting (roughly 4x10?). However, I'm worried that the fence might cast too much of a shadow, so I'm going to do a shadow experiment (catalogue when the bed is in shadow or full light by time of day, fancy I know). I also want to test the soil, since that was something we never did in our old house and I feel it might be worthwhile. 1. Make sure there is nothing scary in the dirt (read: lead) and, 2. Know what soil amendments it might need.
Current To Do's:
- Move rock - level beds
- Buy a ton of soil
- Move strawberry plants to new home
- Soil testing
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