Friday, May 29, 2009

The Raised Bed Chronicles - Part I

Larry is growing the squash and tomatoes. I wanted to make a raised bed, for carrots and maybe something else. I tried raising carrots back in New Jersey 10 years ago and found that they are quite picky about soil conditions.

And I didn't want to use wood. Untreated lumber will rot. Treated lumber - I just do not want the chemicals around. I know they aren't as bad as they used to be, and i know that they don't leach all that far into the soil.

I don't care. I wanted concrete block. Also unnatural, but it'll have to do.


How to abuse a compact car.




Larry could carry two blocks at a time. I could only carry one at a time, plus I kept stopping to take pictures.


But I did almost all the building!





The Building Inspector


And .... this bed is too small.

So I redesigned it. It's now larger than the version in this picture.

Stay tuned for further pictures.

And for our negotiations with other interested parties:


5 comments:

ronnie said...

Oh, wonderful pictures! I look forward to seeing how this turns out! (I've never had success raising veggies in our yard - except for snowpeas. OH MY GOD do I get huge yields of snowpeas. Nothing else - NOTHING - ever peeps above the surface after the seeds go in.)

Catherine said...

Good luck! Keep us posted on the progress. Love the pic of the building inspector....

Sherwood Harrington said...

ronnie - maybe you should start calling all vegetables snow-whatever, like snowcorn, snowjalapenos, etc. Just a thought for the Great White North.

Xtreme English said...

this is a great idea! why haven't they heard about this on the east coast? great pix....

Nostalgic for the Pleistocene said...

Hi XE and welcome! I hope it turns out to be a good idea, but we'll have to see whether we get any food out of it first!

Here i am, a librarian/bookseller, whose first act in any project is usually "Let me buy a book about it before we do anything!" and i did this completely on impulse. Sherwood's redwood boxes are beautiful. Hopefully the beauty of my concrete box will be enhanced by lush plant growth!