Backyard Landscaping - Raised Garden Bed

My wife is committing to growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

At least that's how I see it after completing a sixteen by four by two foot raised garden bed. The project included borrowing a chop-saw from a friend, a slightly treacherous and probably ill-advised trip home from the hardware store with sixteen-foot pieces of lumber strapped to the roof of the car, and much more painting than I would have anticipated.

Oh, and digging in the dirt. Lots of digging.

So here is the box, assembled and upside down. The black boarder around the bottom is my attempt at keeping the Bermuda grass from growing up through the bottom of the box, just like I did with the basketball court removal. As before, we'll see if it does any good.

After a bit of digging, the grass was out and I began the process of digging out the holes for the feet. What I hadn't discovered yet is that there is a sprinkler pipe up near the foot of the stairs that is going to cause a bit of trouble. I had to shift the bed away from the patio concrete enough to clear that pipe.

With my wife's help, we managed to flip it over easily enough. And then I began the level process, digging around the footings, measuring, propping up and pressing down until it was more or less level. You can see a little dab of the white PVC pipe that made this just a bit more tricky.

The last step was moving all the dirt from the patio to the bed and kind of leveling it out. As you can see, the bed is only about a third full so before we plant in the spring we are going to need to get some more.