In AZ, shade is most important

I’d put up pictures of the plants, but they’ve not been faring well. I’m in the process of building shade canopies for each of the raised beds.

I haven’t really nailed down a preferred design yet, but I’m getting an idea of what I DON’T want.

The thing to keep in mind is this: The simpler the solution, the more effective it is. Try to get too fancy, and it’ll cost you more money and time (and plants) in the long run.

 

Second set done!

After a long weekend of buying, building, and planting the second set of beds they are done! Here are pictures below:

 

20 square feet of raised garden beds

 

 

First one done!

Here are the pictures after the first bed is planted (12 square feet):

First Garden bed

First Garden bed

 

 

Preparing the soil

We prepared soil according to instructions in the Square Foot Gardening book. It’s reallly easy. Here’s the mix:  1/3 Peat Moss, 1/3 Vermiculite, 1/3 Compost mix. That’s it! He suggests that you mix a number of different composts together to get the best results.

Vermiculite, organic peat moss, and a few organic composts.

 

Herb Garden

Last weekend Daniel and I found our new favorite place, Summerwinds Nursery. We purchased several herbs and got the supplies for our raised bed.  We are planning on heading back next weekend to get the plants to start our vegetable garden.  I planted garlic chives, onion chives, flat leaf parsley, sweet basil, lemon balm, and lavendar.  Here is our herb garden after I finished planting everything:

 

Herb Garden

 

Raised SFG (Square Foot Garden) bed finished!

While Crystal was at work, I finished the first (of many) raised garden bed(s). Took awhile to get it together and about another hour or so router-ing and sanding the edges off, but I think it will serve our purposes well. 

They’ll most likely look better as I make more. Here’s a picture:

 

Raised bed vegetable garden

 See the post “Materials Handling” for a list of what I used. Thanks!