Raised Garden Boxes

Spring is my favourite time of the year and this year was made even better with the new garden boxes that were built for me! So far I only have three but by the end of summer I will have 5 total. Life with garden boxes if so much easier, I don't know why I didn't do them sooner. They are all raised to about 2 feet off the ground or higher, they were made from old pallets I picked up for free outside of businesses as well as 2*4's that someone was giving away from an old deck. They are lined with black garden liner to help hold the dirt in and help with the prevention of weed.

So far this year I have only had to pull 1 weed, just one from garden boxes where in the years past I had to weed daily. In my garden boxes I have cherry tomatoes, beef steak tomatoes, green peppers, celery, radish, carrots, green onions onions, romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce and American lettuce.

We have been eating lettuce from the garden for about 2 weeks now and its amazing, there is a big difference between home gown and store bought. With the raised beds I don't have as many pests either, but still have a few and to deal with them I just use soap and water sprayed on the plants.

The heat has been really hard on my lettuce and other leafy veggies this year but my tomato plants are growing like crazy.

Very little bending and no getting down on my hands and knees any more, this in itself is a life saver for me. Plus it keeps the dogs out the gardens too, well its supposed to, my current foster Lexi likes to get up in the big and dig in the middle where there is nothing growing, my son seems to love this too.

I put the garden boxes over top of the old garden so they are not taking up any extra space.

The garden boxes are easy to build with the right tools and in most communities you can find free pallets as businesses are always trying to get rid of them.

I used 1 yard of dirt and that filled the three garden boxes no problem plus I have enough left over dirt to fill one more.

As the garden boxes were kind of a last minute thought and not all are done yet I didn't get everything planted that I wanted to, oh well there is always next year.

What do you your gardens look like?

Gardening

This year I once again moved my garden this time to a corner of the yard that I don't use for anything and it will be easier to keep the dogs out of.

I planted, green and yellow beans, sweet peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, cucumbers, romaine lettuce, yellow onions, green onions, and celery. On the other side of the yard I planted strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.

My garden didn't do what it was supposed to this year because I had a garden critter who moved in under the shed and ate everything before it could grow, downside of keeping the dogs out of the garden. I did however get 1 yellow bean, 1 cucumber and 2 zucchinis.

Raspberries of course I didn't get any this year but it grew like crazy! The strawberries produced fruit twice this year and I got none because the birds got them. My blueberries of course didn't produce fruit this year but like the raspberries grew like crazy.

The plan for next year is raised garden boxes and I going to plant more fruit bushes along the back fence.

Although I was disappointed with this years production what I did get out of it was awesome!

Do you plant a garden? What do you plant?