Kitchen Garden Build: March 13-22, 2009  a.k.a Terry's vacation

Some people like to go somewhere warm and sunny and relax during their vacation.  We like to tackle a big project.  This year it was expanding our veggie garden from 70 square feet to 290 square feet, building dog fencing, pouring concrete paths, refreshing the beauty bark on the dog trails, and installing drain pipes to our front downspouts. 

  

Throughout our 4 1/2 years of remodeling our home, we've had the aggravating pattern of doing things twice.  So naturally this would eventually include the landscape we installed 3 years ago.  

Terry's original vision of a lush swath of lawn on the south side of house to play with the dogs had become a swath of mud and grass clumps over the winter.  We were never happy with the quality of the sod from Emerald Turfgrass we originally installed.  It was clay-based which never meshed well with our sandy soil.  

Over the Fall and Winter, we put our heads together to create a new vision for the area.  We wanted more space for vegetables, but needed to design beds and paths that would be dog proof.  

After considering a couple different options for raised beds we found the most economical way to build dog-proof beds was to fence the entire kitchen garden off from the dogs, so we could have easy access to our veggies without worrying about dogs peeing on them or digging them up.  

Here are the new beds and gravel paths.  We used 2x12's of untreated lumber to build the beds.

I didn't take many photos of the build process due to the fact we were working in rain, snow mixed with rain, hail, mud, clouds, and cold.  

Oso uses the weed barrier like a big blanket.

The beds are 12 inches deep.  We put a layer of the broken up sod in the bottom to get rid of the sod and fill some of the volume.  Then we put in a layer of 3-way mix topsoil.  We topped off the beds with TAGRO potting soil.  We'll mix the top two layers really well when we get ready to plant.  

Another area that got really muddy was our entry.  We created large concrete stepping stones to make the transition from the entry walkway to the side- yards.

We used 24 sacks of concrete to pour six - 4 ft x 31 in stones.

There's me in the background bundled up from the cold.  And I was still freezing.


Terry is building the fence panels to the new garden.

We can't wait to finish a few more details and then plant our seeds!!!