The Vegetable Garden

It doesn't look like much now, but just you wait.  This is where the vegetable garden will be.  Eventually.  (I never said this garden would be done any time soon.)  That's Banana staring over the fence like Wilson.

There are going to be two 4x8 foot raised beds on either side of the brick path going down the middle.  Since, we have gophers (I've scalped four in two years), I'm going to do my best to keep them out by laying a couple layers of chicken wire on the ground.  Or ground wire, it might be called, as it is specific to keeping rodents from coming upwards.  The outsides of the beds will have gravel, which was saved from when this same area housed a 15 foot Oak with gravel as mulch.  The house lies about eight feet from where the bricks enter the garden.  Needless to say, the oak was too close.  It represented stump three of five I have pulled from this yard.  If I never see another stump again....of course, after I get out the last two.  But, that's another post.

The fencing will be lined on the inside with chicken wire to keep the rabbits out.  Yea, we have a lot of them, too.  On top of the stucco wall, I have enough left over lumber to build a two foot fence that will keep the riff-raff from jumping down from above.  The fence itself used left over slats from a fence that fell on the other side of the house.  The posts and rails are redwood from the local lumber yard.  The bricks are recycled from the yard.  After all is said and done, the garden, minus plants, should only run about $200.  I think that's not too bad.

This area also gets light from the first break of dawn over the hill behind us until four pm, when it drops down behind our neighbor to the west.  That's about a solid 10 hours.  Best light in the yard.  We're starting small, as we haven't grown vegetables before and don't want to become too overwhelmed.  My lovely wife, M2, also wanted to use some of each bed for cutting flowers.  When we become more proficient, we'll put in more beds.  We'll also need to see how they handle the local wildlife and decide if more fencing is needed, or if we can grow rabbit favorites INSIDE the fence, and less rabbit favorites OUTSIDE the fence.  Again, that's another post.

Here is a close up (sorry for the blur...we're still pricing new cameras) of the pavers salvaged from other spots.  We still have about five more rows to put on the far end, which will take us to the end of the raised boxes.  I simply dug a trench and laid them on the ground.  That explains the slight unevenness.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, we're not putting a man on the moon, we're trying to get a wheelbarrow close to a vegetable bed.  Second, we're hoping the vegetable garden path might end up like this one day.

I lifted that picture from Flickr.  If it's a problem, tell me and I'll take it down.

Plenty of work left, and I'll try to actually get picture of plants in the near future.