Garden pictures

Just thought I would post some garden pictures since I went a new route this year with building garden planter boxes. My son and I built these using 2 x 10’s for the sides and then 2 x 6’s for the top edge. I wish I would have taken pictures before the plants came in so you could see the boxes better. We have two boxes that are 5′ by 10 foot giving us plenty of planting space. It took 4 yards of soil and 1.5 yards of compost to fill them. I dug in an irrigation line from the outside house faucet to each box so watering is simple. I am sure some are wondering why I didn’t just till up the soil and plant in the ground. Well, I am tired or dealing with the heavy clay soil and I also wanted get it up in the air to save my back from bending over. Another benefit of this has been ZERO weeds. The compost I bought from Sargent’s in Rochester hasn’t had any weeds at all. They said the get it from a cow farm in Wisconsin…..thank you Wisconsin! I haven’t had to use any fertilizer or chemicals.

In one box I put 8 foot 2×2’s in the back corners and ran wires between them for beans and cucumbers. I have been getting several 9-11 inch cucumbers each day. As you can see in the pictures there was one that jumped up to 16 inches before it was picked. Even at that size the seeds in them are very small so they are good eating. We have lots of tomatoes but only the cherry tomatoes have turned red. The empty spots where you see bare soil are where we have already harvested lettuce and cabbage and I just replanted for a fall crop of lettuce.

Here’s a full list of everything we planted so you can get an idea for how much can be planted in this size space:

Cilantro
Romaine Lettuce
Carrots
Green Peppers
Summer squash
Cucumbers
Green Beans
Leaf Lettuce
Beets
Cantaloupe
Cherry, Roma, and Big Boy tomatoes
Cabbage

Very nice! nothing better than fresh veggies

Nice Garden Box setup.

What kind of wood did you build it from?
Any preservative on the wood?
How old is the wood box?

Just curious, thinking about building one out of concrete landscape blocks

Nice garden! Built my boxes this spring for a Mother’s day present to my gal. I used the landscape timbers from Menards, 36″ rebar to secure them together, and used 8mil plastic to line them. Mine are 4X8.

Finished it off with landscape edgers and tamped class 5.

I typcally make several trips to the “salad” bar when I am out working on the yard.

I went the less expensive route with untreated pine rather than cedar which if I remember correctly would have cost me around $600-700 total. Way more than I want to spend on this project. When it was all said and done with the dirt and compost I think it still totaled between $400 and $500. I didn’t treat the wood but hopefully I can get 10 years before the pine completely goes bad. I stapled landscape fabric to the inside to keep the soil from seeping out between the boards. That has worked good.

You will also see in one of the pictures that there is a bent PVC pipe running across the box. I put three of these in each box and then draped some row covers over the plants. The PVC holds the row cover up off the plants. In the spring this provided rain and wind protection but allowed in some moisture and sunlight to get through to the plants. This really helped the tomato plants which usually get blown over.

I plan to put all of the PVC back in as it gets cooler out and use the cover again. From what I read these row covers will allow me to keep plants going until nightime temps reach the mid 20’s. I just hope to keep things green until the end of October.

Quote:

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Nice garden! Built my boxes this spring for a Mother’s day present to my gal. I used the landscape timbers from Menards, 36″ rebar to secure them together, and used 8mil plastic to line them. Mine are 4X8.

Finished it off with landscape edgers and tamped class 5.

I typcally make several trips to the “salad” bar when I am out working on the yard.

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Holy cow that looks first class!! Nice job. I was thinking about edging and wood chips sometime down the road….but yours looks like a great alternative.

Are you guys in rural areas? I’m going to do a garden at the lake next year, tons of deer. Thinking of a chichen wire fence. Have you ever used liquid fence? would be curious how you deal with animals it if it’s an issue. thanks guys, very nice work