We haven't had a vegetable garden since we lived in Boise, so now that we had some space, I thought it would be fun to have one here at the new house. Few challenges - ground is rocky, soil is like sand, short growing season and their are a lot of animals that would love some soft leafy greens - especially deer. In February I started researching and doing some planning. The idea was that when we did our landscaping in the back, I would get the team to scrape an area and bring an irrigation line down to the area when they put the rest of the irrigation system in. My inspiration for the garden was here. Beautiful but unfortunately no plans so I had to make up my own plans just by looking at the pictures. I also used the farmers almanac online garden planner tool just to see how it might look.
The garden would be a set of raised beds, with a 5-6 foot wooden fence around it. The back landscaping went in late march, so I ordered the wood and set to work. The biggest challenge was getting the base level. its funny how the ground feels pretty level until you actually start to measure it. The west side (right side in most of the photos) was at least 10 inches lower which meant getting a load of gravel dropped in the driveway and a lot of hauling gravel in a wheelbarrow down to bring it up somewhat. Additionally... like a lot of plans, they seem right until you get started so due to large boulders messing up post placement and other challenges I had to make a number of changes and concessions as I went along. Here is a series of photos of the build process.
Here is the finished product. Ultimately I think it turned out pretty nice and we look forward to growing some fresh veggies for years to come! The only thing left to do is install the drip irrigation system. Abbie and PJ helps plant as well... for now we are hose watering it until the irrigation is running... hopefully in next couple days.
