Thursday, May 30, 2013

Just one more raised bed (for now)...

Home Depot had landscape timbers on sale for Memorial Day.  I couldn't resist the urge and decided to build another raised bed to my front yard.

I put down a nice layer of cardboard to prevent the weeds from coming through the soil.  This does help.  One of the beds I put in previously did not get a layer of cardboard and I pull weeds from it almost every day.  Luckily they come out rather easily.

I filled this bed with a mixture of compost, peat moss, and garden soil (Home Depot had that on sale too).

The final step was to add drip irrigation.  I can state from experience now that it is much easier to put in irrigation tubing when there are no plants in the bed.  I ran it a little differently in this bed.  In the other beds I ran the tubing in a "U" shape and tried to split the beds into thirds.  I wanted one third of the bed on either side of the tubing and one third in the middle.  (I hope that makes sense.  It's more obvious in this picture.)
For this bed I ran an additional length of tubing down the middle of the bed.  Then I put in drip emitters every 24 inches.  The last step was connecting it to the rain barrels which were already being used to irrigate the other beds.
One final note.  I stained all of my raised beds.  I don't know if doing so helps to protect them from the elements or not.  I do it so they match my fence.  And, I think it makes them look better.

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