Vegetable Gardening: Let the Plot Begin!

UPDATED! The vegetables are growing. Yeah!
I am so excited about our vegetable garden going in this summer. I worked my booty off this past week putting in garden beds - pulling out a ton of sod, leveling the ground, moving huge boulder rocks and planning out where all the 2x6's would go. I even used my hubbies miter saw and LOVED it. For some reason I always let the hubs use the miter saw on our past projects. What was I thinking??? That thing is AWESOME (sung in an opera voice).

I decided to put the garden smack dab in front of our deck so when the morning breeze hits and I'm sitting out there, I can smell all my veggies, just waiting to be picked. We have a little patio area off the back deck that will now be right in front of the garden. So without further ado, here is what happened over the last 4 days. I put Evan in the pack and play outside when I could and then worked during the kids nap time. It was so hard but I am SO excited to get planting now!

BEFORE

Round flower bed be-gone! What was the previous owner thinking?

  

AFTER

 

 HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN....

There were huge boulders around the circular flower bed. Apparently they needed to remind me that I turned 32 this year - I no longer recover quickly ha! What you cant see in this photo is how uneven the area is. There was about a 5 inch slope down where the rocks were.

 Yes the view is kind of ghetto - the tarp was our attempt at keeping the weeds down. Bahahaha!

THE PLAN: 2 6x8 beds and a big 12x4 bed in behind them...

 

but first we had to move a ton of rock -

 

Dan and our little helper, Peyton, moved it in her wheel barrow to our rock garden area. She insisted that we use her wheel barrow. How could we resist?

 

 

 

Progress. We used free wood so this projects total cost was...$0 YEAH!!
Yes - some of that is Trex decking and it was all given to us by my rad neighbor. Shout out to Jack. Thanks Jack!

 

I cut the sod out so the boards sit just about 2 inches in the ground. In some area where the ground was really level they sit about 3 inches in the ground. To make sure that no grass tried to move into the garden beds I used left over edging I had from our front landscaping project. I put it in 5 inches below the grass roots. That knife is what I used to cut all the roots away from the grass as I pulled the sod back.

 In this picture you can see the bed liner - I did this all the way around the inside of the beds.

 Grass be gone and don't even think about trying to grow in here!

next, I screwed the bed liner to the 2x6 so that the grass would have no way to push up the bed liner when it tries, oh so hard, to grow where it shouldnt. I thought this step was pretty darn clever, if I do say so myself.

The final product was worth all the hard work. We put the netting up for a few weeks to keep the robins out. They were drooling over all the worms! It worked. Our seeds have all sprouted and now the netting is off. Here's what it looked like with the netting

 

FINAL AFTER SHOT

The honey comb in lay in front of our deck is pretty cool. I found it hidden under grass that had grown over it. Who knows how long it had been hidden away. The last owner apparently never went outside. From our deck to the lawn we have a 16'x4' patio with this honey comb cobble stone stuff (not sure what to call it?). I want to put a little table and 2 chairs down here so that I can sip my lemonade and eat sun ripened tomatoes in the warm sun. Doesn't that just sound dreamy right now? Now if only the sunshine would come out.

Some inspirational garden scenes to ponder....

 

Image via www.re-nest.com

Now thats a Green House. Wow!

 I like this drawing of a garden here. We plan to have a similar layout with sugar snap peas growing up the backside of both the beds and then tomatoes growing up trellises in the very back garden bed.

 Image via apartmenttherapy.com

We will have lots of lettuce indeed, and because we can access the beds from all sides I plan to put them close together to leave little room for weeds to grow.

Next 4 images via ewainthegarden.blogspot.com

 I love flowers she incorporated into the garden beds and that river rock is amazing between the beds too.

 I plan to border the very back garden bed with Lavender. I loev the colors in this bed - the lettuce combined with the purple lavender is amazing!
And here's another photo idea I loved... a trellis for the peas to climb up made out of twine, but even better - look at how she covered the soil with straw. I bet they don't worry about weeds. Awesome idea!

 One last cool idea to leave you with....Lettuce in a wheel barrow. Why didn't I think of that? Such a neat idea! You could put some nasturtiums in a wheel barrow too for a pop of color.