Raised Gardens

We have lived in South Carolina for almost three years now.  For two summers, we have tried to have a backyard garden.  For two summers, whatever we planted has been overrun by weeds or killed by a combination of nutrient-less soil and the HOT SC summer sun.  Seriously, we have YET to eat anything that we've tried to grow in our yard.  So this year, we are doing a lot more planning and preparing for the gardening season. 

I will still be working full time and we will have a newborn baby in the house, so I don't expect to have hours to spend on ANYthing, much less gardening.  With the time constraint in mind, we decided to build raised garden beds to cut down on the weeding we'll inevitably have to do.  We first drew out what we wanted on a piece of paper and then made the decision to go with half cinder blocks for the walls.  The half blocks are only 4" wide versus 8" wide for a regular cinder block.  We went with the half blocks because it would still give us enough strength, especially after filling them with wooden stakes and sand, but also give us more planting room inside the beds than a full cinder block would give. 

The area in the yard was already cleared out from last year's feeble garden attempt, so we just covered the section of ground with clear plastic to keep the weeds out of our beds and started the first row of blocks.  Marcus build three beds so that we would have room to walk in between them to make weeding and harvesting easier.  We also used left over fencing stakes and fence wire to fashion homemade trellises next to the fence. 

After making sure everything was secure and stable, we filled the three beds with organic topsoil that will (hopefully!) be much more suited to growing vegetables than the sandy soil that we are blessed with here on the beautiful coast. 

To make everything more visually appealing, we painted the blocks a light green.  We wanted to add the lattice to cover up the cinder blocks, but it is turning out to be more of a pain than we originally anticipated, so we may just leave them alone.  We filled the pathways between the beds with river rocks and trimmed everything out with metal edging to keep the lawnmower from shooting rocks everywhere. :)

The three small planter boxes on top of each bed are the kids' gardens (we even have one for Mason!).  We think it's important that they know where food comes from, so they (especially Taylor) will have a hand in everything that grows in those planters, from picking out what to plant, to weeding, watering, and harvesting. 

We are still in the process of deciding what to plant where, so my OCD/nerd self created a diagram on Excel that we can fill in and change around depending on what we want to grow.  The goal is to get the seeds in the ground before Mason arrives, so we'll probably be planting around the end of February. 

I can't wait to see what we are able to harvest this year!  I'm looking forward to (hopefully!) making homemade baby food for Mason and exploring how to can and freeze what we are able to harvest!