This year's other new thing...

I decided to build my own raised beds this time out. I know...this is insane...sort of. I am the one with tools in the fam. and so was pretty much on my own on this one. I wanted a dedicated bed for the squash and one for edible flowers. The squash happened, the flowers did not.

The first one is about 6'x8'..and was a bear and a half to move from garage to garden....but it got in there. The second was 5'x5'. And it never got filled with new dirt.

But the larger bed did VERY well for the squash...seven plants in all.

Of course, once again, we put up the giant anti-opossum fence to keep the little twerps out of the beds. I managed to actually have some squash to freeze for future breads and pies and fritters as a result. Yay!

I wish I could say I'd done massive garden time this past summer, but other than the drip system, nothing really huge occurred.

All in all, it was quite the abysmal summer in terms of the production. Eggplant essentially failed in the cold. Basil...ughkkk, I never even made pesto for winter! I'm regretting this now, as we are deep in the heart of January.

Vegetables and them some!

The beds went in during the month of May, and  by August this is what the yard looked like.    The yield of crops was so fantastic that it blew me away!  

How to build a raised bed garden without losing your mind.

The following is a catalogue of what I went through in order to create four raised beds for my garden last summer.   When I bought this cool old 1930's house a couple year's back, I intended to have a terrific garden.  When I got was an overproducing loquat tree and a strange circular patch of lawn with odd sprinkler system and a lot of downhill run-off.  The nice thing about this town is that the older homes have enormous back yards that belonged originally to farmer types.  As a result, they tend to have numerous old fruit trees.  Mine had the loquat, a nectarine, and two very lovely grape vines.  I wanted to grow all my own veggies and see if I could feed myself through the year.

So, here's the scoop along with some photographs of  how that process unfolded and what has happened as a result.