Garden Improvement - Raised Garden Beds!

After last year's vegetable garden resulted in... semi-production? I knew I had to do something different. My plants just weren't performing at peak. Granted, this may have been due to the record high heat and long periods without rain. However, I felt the real issue was my crappy top soil and I was determined that this year would be better.

I decided that even if I broke the bank I was putting in raised garden beds. I had a year to think about how I wanted to do this and how to be the most cost effective. I did some internet research. I poked through my back issues of Better Homes and Gardens. And I did a little brainstorming. After all, 2.5 years of architecture school has to be good for something. After all, I didn't go to all the work and inconvenience of my dining room table looking like a potting bench for months as seen here:



Just to have another lackluster harvest.

And so, I decided my best course of action with my minimal budget was simply 2 x 8 x 10's cut in half by the wonderful people at Lowe's and nailed together with angle brackets. Add a few bags of garden soil, manure, and the compost I had saved from last year and hopefully... this year will see marked improvement. *Fingers crossed*

I started with this:


What a weedy mess!

And then there was this:



Then I decided that I wanted to add a third bed for a cutting garden. I love having flowers in the house and while I usually get a pretty good deal at the grocery store, it would be nice to have enough flowers in my own yard to cut my own. And so, here we are:



I still have some border to install and more gravel but its starting to look like the real deal. My mom even commented that it looked a little Williamsburg-esque when she visited. Quite the compliment. :)