Tuesday, August 1 was another visit with my mother. I went over to her house in the morning for a project she and I had recently become excited over. She and I decided to build a raised bed in her back yard to plant vegetables. All of my talk about the farm and agriculture got her interested. We started by taking measurements of her yard to see how much raised bed we could fit. We concluded that we could fit up to 4 raised beds as big as 4 feet by 7 feet. Then we went inside and made a list of all my mothers favorite vegetables. We discussed what plants can be grown together and whats plants need to be away from each other and I made a square foot gardening plan based on her desired plants needs.

We went to Lowe’s and the home depot looking for a raised bed kit. But when I found it, I realized that the construction was poor, especially for the $92 price tag. So instead I went to the lumber department and got nine 6 foot fence boards, a 4×4, and a box of screws to build my own.

I had the lumber department cut 4×4 into 4- 23 1/4 inch pieces, which is the height of 3 fence boards stacked on top of each other.  I also had them cut 3 of the fence boards in half for me. I could have done these cuts myself, but that would mean finding and borrowing all my stepdads tools, setting them up and then cleaning them later. For $3, I had all of my cuts done for me. To be honest, I normally wouldn’t want to have them do the cuts, because they are not very accurate, but this was a rough project and I wasn’t aiming for extreme accuracy.

I used the fence boards to make the outer walls for the raised beds and the 4×4 pieces as the supports in the corners. I grabbed my stepdad’s drill and screwed together the raised bed in a little less than an hour. My mom helped hold the sides steady, but if I had been doing the project alone, my moms outdoor dinning chairs probably would have done an adequate job (meaning I could see being able to build another by myself.)

We chilled in her back yard for a little while, admiring our work. We were able to make a custom raised bed in less than 2 hours (including shopping for lumber) for about $50. I had decided that I wanted the raised bed to have tall walls so that it would be easy to sit next to and work in the bed, or stand next to and harvest. It will be more expensive to fill with soil, but I think that the additional expense is worth it for the continence and ease of access. If my mom loves this new garden and wants to build more, we can always build the other beds shorter to save on the cost of soil.

I had initially put this post into my week-and-a-half summary, but then decided that it deserved its own post.