Monday, November 14, 2016

Bedtime

I grow vegetables in raised beds because I grew tired of fighting my heavy clay soil. One aspect of raised beds is they can be moved. Some may consider this an asset while others would disagree. In general, I haven't moved them... much. But this year I decided to reduce the footprint of the vegetable garden. One way to do that was to butt the beds up against each other instead of maintaining a path all around each one.

Before (pic from last year)

While my SO helped me rearrange the beds, I joked that this was the LAST TIME we would do this. Well, ha-ha. A few days later, I decided the new configuration needed some tweaking. We are relocating the gate into the garden as well. The reduction in paths would mean that after entering the garden through the gate, one would have to walk all the way to the end of the beds to get across the garden, a real pain if one were, say, pushing a wheel barrow full of manure.

After-after

I wasn't sure how my SO would greet the idea of moving beds *again*. Fortunately, my son was willing to open up a path in the offset middle. Now gardener and accouterments can take a short cut to the back.

Wide path installed

Even this big boy, a gift from my SO, will fit.


A side note: While moving the beds, we discovered that even though they are made from cedar, the beds are starting to rot where they are in contact with the ground. Very disappointing.

2 comments:

Jason said...

That looks like a big job!

CommonWeeder said...

Your comment about the cedar is timely for me. We are thinking about making a raised bed that is at least 36 inches high in a wet spot. I'm been considering putting the wood on top of cement blocks. The bottom layer of fill for the raised bed will be hay bales and I won't care if they show.