Birth of the Veggie Beds

*Please note: These pictures were taken over a series of weeks and use a variety of the 3 veggie beds Mark's building for me...oops...us.*

First, find a sunny (or mostly sunny) spot in your weed-infested yard. Lay the boards cut to the desired length in the approximate place you'd like your bed to be.

(FYI, this is Veggie Coffin #3)



Start assembling cut and marked boards as they are laid out. Leave spare pieces of wood laying all over the yard.



Take a break. (DH is sitting on the wood for veggie beds #2 & #3 piled atop the frame for veggie bed #1)



Complete framing beds. This is veggie bed #1 and #2. Two isn't really completely finished. DH has to take out the support stakes in the middle and then he's going to put some kind of 2x4 in there for added support. (Not sure what all that means exactly, but he knows what he's doing...I think!)



Line bottom of bed with cardboard salvaged from work. Cut to fit the bottom and completely cover. Water thoroughly. Fill garden cart with leaves that have been blown under the covered outside work area, decomposing all fall and winter. Back cart up to bed and scoop leaves out into the veggie bed. Repeat until leaves are approximately 4"-6" deep. Water again.



Go to Silver Creek Materials, , (where they spray their compost piles with Cokes and Dr. Peppers and other carbonated and malt-based liquid drinks) in Trusty Steed. Purchase 1 cubic yard of premium soil mix that smells faintly of carbonated and alcoholic beverages (what a combination!) and haul it home. Using trusty garden cart, unload sweet smelling soil into bed, filling partway. Water thoroughly about half-way through the process.



*Note the wood chips still on the ground.

Continue unloading soil from Trusty Steed using trusty garden cart until veggie coffin is full to the rim.



Water again, thoroughly. Then, because you miscalculated how much soil you needed for one bed and still have more soil in the bed of Trusty Steed, you make TWO more trips to unload soil into the new flower bed in the backyard. Sorry, I don't have pics yet because it was just about dark when DH was doing this, but he wanted to get all the soil out of the bed of the truck before nightfall.

While DH is doing all the hard work, I was doing this:



These are most of the plants I'm taking to the swap this afternoon. I had to transplant all those little seedlings in the 4" pots, label them (with plastic forks!), and then make sure that the ones already promised to others had their new owners' names on them. I also dug up a couple of daylilies, which is very hard work! I watered the flowerbed in the front yard and did some weeding as well.

This ends my Saturday and the first half-day of my vacation. I worked Saturday until 3 and then came home to all this activity!!