If you build it, they will come

Who's they? Veggies? Little baby bunnies who will eat all my veggies but who will be so darn cute that I'll let them? Evil slimy little buggies? In any case, it's built, and something [winter?] is coming.

Filled with a haphazard toss of lawn dirt (so.much.clay.) and "Mel's Mix" components - peat, compost, and vermiculite

This one's a preview of sorts - the pieces of the grid are just resting on each other and the sides of the bed.

I planted the starts in their appropriate squares and put up a couple of trellises for the cucumbers, watermelon, and peas. I'll take a sunny shot of the final product tomorrow.

Raised bed: Waiting for the sun

We've had a couple of nasty, rainy, outdoor-task-killer days, so to feel better about the progress of our garden sans plants I spent a little time this evening treating the cedar planks that will line the bed. We used Watco Teak Oil, which takes two applications with set times of 30 and 15 minutes respectively, and a final dry wipe. Easy peasy.

Though the cedar wouldn't have rotted, the oil will keep it from greying over time, and the finish brings out some especially beautiful grain in a couple of our boards. Hooray pretty cedar!

We're building the bed with four 4' cedar planks (6x1), four 4x4 posts for the corners, and we grabbed six 1/2" moldings to put together a square foot garden grid. That will do for now, until my paycheck allows a trellis. 

The weather is supposed to be gloriously clear tomorrow, and since I have seeds sprouting in the kitchen and plant starts sitting expectantly outdoors, I'm itching to get this garden going. We should be able to build and root the bed tomorrow, and if the stars align (read: if we have enough dirt/compost/happy veggie fill), we'll be able to get our plants in then too. 

Moving and a late start

Better late than never!

We're in a new place on Cape Cod, and have gotten permission from our lovely landlords to dig up their backyard for gardening purposes. Though I was tempted to dig up everything and plant ALLTHETHINGS, I've settled for a reasonable 4x4 raised bed.

This is before:

And this is after our mosquito-ridden spade, dig, and soil-shake session:

The lovely cedar boards are stood up for preview purposes. We're planning to cover under the original sod to keep out existing weeds and grubs, to do a true raised bed. We did save lots of the original soil, though, and found some big scary moths-in-progress inside:

Judging from what we've seen in the trees, outside on the porch, and outside of our window, this is one of the growth stages of a blinded sphinx. The males of the household (my boyfriend and the husband of our husband-wife landlord pair) wanted nothing to do with this bug.

Hoping to get some more work done today, digging in a couple of the posts and covering the base of the bed. We picked up some starts since it's a bit late to begin from seed - here's hoping we build quickly and they take well!