Raised Bed Gardening

You will need to cut boards or to buy 6x1 inch boards, the length and size for the space that you are trying to frame in for your garden

• circular saw
• hammer or drill depending if you are using nails or screws
• 1 1/2 inch screws about six or eight
• cardboard enough to cover your gardens bottom
• the wheelbarrow to transfer topsoil
• spade or shove
• Epsom salts

Buy vegetable plants of your choice. My choice was tomatoes, acorn squash, hot pepper plants, and some spices.

You can see by this Photo ,that this spot needed a backyard makeover. We decided to build a backyard raised vegetable garden.

To do this we first had to level out this area and take down a bunch of branches, from the spruce trees, beside the garden space, to give it more sunlight. We also cleared the framed on top of this garden of boards to let in more sunlight.

This space was an old rabbit pen so we decided to leave the posts for our boards to be framed to, and left the frame above it as a roof. We could in the future grow grapes and let them trail over the roof. It would look great.

Next.you need to build the frame and we used 1 x 6 inch boards that were left over from a previous project. We measured them to fit the space,between the 4x4 posts, that was a rabbit pen built here before. We screwed the boards onto the 4 x 4 post that were already in place.

We were three feet short of a board,in the front of our frame, so we cut a smaller board and pegged it in with a one foot wooden peg hammered into the ground, to hold it in place. This peg could then be moved in the spring,when the soil settles,and we could add more soil threw this opening ,to top up the garden.

Once the space has been cleared out ,you need to completely weed the bottom of the 4 x 10 space that you are going to be using as you raised bed vegetable garden. It is important to make sure all the weeds and grass are pulled out first before you start.

Then it is important : to cover the entire bottom with cardboard. This will stop any new weeds from growing. The cardboard will eventually break down and become more soil. This will stop the weeds, and help the earth, then buying the landscaping plastic which will never break down.

This is a frugal way out of stopping future weeds and grass from growing back into the garden as the years go on. I just happen to work at Shoppers so it was easy to obtain cardboard boxes to cover the bottom of this garden

Will we were lucky enough to have an excess amount of topsoil that was in mounds at the backyard that we transferred to the raised bed vegetable garden frame.

We filled it halfway full of the topsoil (if you aren't as lucky as us to have an abundance of soil ,than you can buy it in bags from any hardware store or plant store in your neighborhood). We had topsoil left over from digging out a fish pond that never got built. You guessed it right in the same spot as our new vegetable garden.

We then took Epsom salts by the hand full and sprinkled it like chicken feed across the whole top of this layer of topsoil. This will fertilize the garden as well as deter insects from coming into the garden. It is a two-way awesome material to use.

• 1 tablespoon of Epsom salts
• 1 teaspoon of sugar to
• 1 gallon of water

• I have been using Epsom salts regularly all summer to water my plants on my balcony and I have to say they have tripled in size, using this instead of miracle grow.

We then proceeded to fill the garden to the top of the boards with soil.

This is an easy project that can be accomplished in one weekend. You can see by the photos that it produces an awesome looking garden. It will be easy to weed whack around the edges of the boards to keep the grass and weeds from growing into the garden. The epsom salt will keep the vegetables bug free and fertilized throughout the summer months. Just add water. Even water was supplied for us as this year we had a very wet summer.

This garden is now at the end of the season. Here is the most recent picture that you can see, we had success, in our first season of building a raised bed vegetable garden. This is a fun project that the whole family can get in on and it will save you money, on buying tomatoes and vegetables next summer:) Thankyou for reading and comments my friends.