Garden update Part 1

Last year Mr. Ramon and I built a little garden in the backyard of the house we are renting. He put up a great little fence and we put in a few beds. We wanted to upgrade our garden in a couple ways this year.

In between the beds our garden was filled with grass. I didn't look bad but was a real pain to Mr. Ramon when it grew long and he had to mow and weed eat between the beds and around the fence. Just awkward. It seemed like to much work to tear all the grass out so we came up with a solution.

Mr. Ramon mowed the grass as low as possible and we covered it with weed barrier cloth. I thought this was going to be super hard - cutting and fitting the cloth in the garden. But it turned out to be really easy to work with. I used these big metal hairpins for lack of a better word to tack the cloth to the ground. The cloth we chose breathes so water will move through it. But it will keep the grass from coming through.

Our next step is to go to the garden center and pick up the play chips needed to co re the cloth.

Stay tuned for the final piece!

Garden Part 2

With the fence up we now have a dog secure area and can start on the beds. I have seen so many types of beds in my neighborhood and online. I learned a few things about building beds. 

 - Treated lumber has chemicals that might be bad for you and the earth. It lasts longer in the ground as beds - but are they worth the risk.

- Redwood is preferred by most but is expensive. We are in a rental so we decided on untreated pine.

I used this tutorial on the Sunset website as my guide. We decided to go with 6" high beds knowing we were going to dig into the dirt at the site. I loved that they had instructions on how to put on row cover holders. Row covers are new to me. When I had a garden in Southern California there was never any need to cover the beds. We decided on 3 beds that were 6'x3'. That width allows me to easily reach into the middle of the bed. The guys at Home Depot again cut all our wood for us. I put the three beds together with our screw gun on the porch one night when Mr. Ramon worked late. 

Mr. Ramon had the hard part ahead. He had to dig out the beds in the grass to place the beds in. What a job. This resulted in a lot of sod. I had a great solution for that - we had the two large ditches in the front yard from where the junipoers used to be. We did a sod transplant and filled in the ditches with sod and watered heavily to get it started. Hopefully it will take. 

Once the beds were dug out we pounded in the bed frames and leveled them. Now we just need dirt and compost to fill them up completely. 

We are well on our way to having a garden!