Making garden beds with salvaged material

Spring is coming! My indoor seedlings are coming up and look great so far. Before I know it they'll be grown up and moving out into the real world :') When it's time for them to go outside, there are two options I've been debating: raised beds, and in-ground gardening.

Pros of raised beds:

• Full control over soil quality, since you're filling it with new dirt. Good if the soil already in your yard is poor quality (bad drainage, poor nutrition).
• Slightly more ergonomic -- don't have to bend down as much to work on your plants.
• Looks neat and organized. Make your neighbors think you know what you're doing.

Cons:

• You have to build them (time, effort, and planning).
• Buying a bunch of wood from Home Depot isn't actually that cheap.
• The biggest con: Good dirt is not cheap!! You can easily spend hundreds of dollars on dirt to fill your raised beds. Buying by the bag means you need to buy a ton of bags to fill up all that volume, but buying bulk by the cubic yard means a truck is gonna dump a lot of dirt in front of your house (there's usually a minimum order).

I had no idea how much it could cost to set up a raised bed until I started looking into it. When I realized it was gonna cost me hundreds of dollars, I said nope and decided I would garden in-ground, clay soil and all. But I continued to keep an eye out -- scavenging wood here and there from people who were throwing it out, checking Facebook and craigslist for free or cheap supplies. I love scavenging and re-using free stuff because a) it helps the environment by reducing the amount of stuff that goes to landfill, and b) it's free!! This is also what's led me to start refinishing old furniture :)

One day I hit the jackpot with Craigslist. Some guy, only a five minute drive away, said he had about 2 cubic yards of dirt in his yard that he was trying to get rid of for free. It wasn't just rocky construction dirt -- it was nice dirt. Apparently the previous owners of his house had brought in a bunch of dirt to make a landscaped hill in the backyard, and now this guy was flattening it out to build a shed. So this was the kind of dirt that you pay money for. Not only that, the guy said he had already sifted it all with a 1" screen -- so it was loose and ready to use. And did I mention it was free!!!

We loaded up a large zipcar with our three biggest storage containers and drove over. Dirt is heavy, but luckily Isaac was with me and fully prepared to Lift Heavy Things. I definitely couldn't have snagged all this dirt without him. I couldn't even budge a full bin of dirt trying to push it on the ground.

• Dirt from craigslist -- free
• storage bins from basement -- free
• 1 hour zipcar reservation -- $14
• a strong boyfriend who is always down for a workout -- priceless :)

I frequently find free things listed online and rent a zipcar to pick it up from the curb. Usually this is at night, when Isaac is free to help me lift stuff. We recently had an incident where we were trying to pick up a piece of furniture from someone's front yard, but the furniture was disassembled in a way that seemed like it was missing pieces. We fumbled around this guy's front yard with the car headlights on for about 15 minutes in the dark at 10:30 pm, until a neighbor came out and suspiciously asked what we were doing.... We reassured him, but still drove away feeling like we had done something illegal.

This time, we learned our lesson and went when it was still bright outside. (In Isaac's words: "No. We are not shoveling dirt in someone's backyard at 10 pm.")

Also, fun fact, since this is my first time gardening, I don't actually own a shovel yet. We drove up to this guy's house, he let us into the yard, showed us the dirt pile, and said, "You guys have a shovel?" 

"Uhhh.... no."

Thank god this guy had two shovels in his yard he was willing to let us use.

It was hard work (that mostly Isaac did), but we finally got it all in our front yard, and went to bed.

The next day, I went out looking for some wood. We have a bunch of scavenged scrap wood in the basement that we took off people's hands for free, but I was hoping to find some long pieces for the bed. We live right next to a trail, so there's lots of felled trees and other nature debris around. There's also a fence along the whole path made of 6 foot long 2"x8" boards, which I always look at jealously thinking about how well they would work in a garden bed. 

Don't worry, I didn't steal the fence. But there was one section of it that had broken. It had already been repaired with new wood, but the old pieces were lying in the dirt next to it. It looked like they had been there for a long time -- I flipped a piece over and it was half rotten, with bugs crawling around in the damp soil. Besides that one piece though, there were two very sturdy and pretty long pieces. I took all three.

There was a 6' plank in near perfect condition, so I decided right then the garden bed would be 6' long. I planned to put these up against the bushes, so 2' is a good depth to reach over. And the plank was about 7" wide, so I made that the height of the bed. (A garden bed should be at least 6" so there's room for roots to grow.) I also happened to have a 4' x 8" scrap of plywood in the basement, so I cut that in half to make two 2' planks for the sides. Then I used the remaining two wood pieces to cobble together the last side, figuring I could fill in the gaps with some rocks the previous owner had left under our porch.

Here's the rough layout of the bed, in front of our three bins of free dirt:

We already had a hammer and nails which I had bought to repair furniture. However, hammering nails is really not my forte. I'm always self conscious about the noise I'm making and never hit the nail hard enough. Enter Isaac again, who couldn't care less about bothering our neighbors:

(Our neighbors also have lots of young kids who like to run down the street screaming, so I didn't actually feel that bad.)

Another thing to consider is keeping small animals out of the garden bed. We have a rabbit who hangs out in our yard pretty much every day and seems pretty fearless. It's seen me walking the cat outside plenty of times and hardly seems to care (also is really not that much smaller than the cat). 

A while ago, Isaac's work got a large package delivered in a box made of nailed-together scrap wood. Isaac took apart the box, pulled out what nails he could, and we brought the nicest pieces home. Even though they were "nice" (as in, didn't have sharp nails sticking out of them), many of the pieces didn't have flat edges and still had bark showing on some parts, so I wasn't sure when I would ever use it. Now's their time! We nailed them to the four corners of the bed. They're the perfect height for me to staple in some chicken wire later to protect from bunnies. 

(One thing I still haven't figured out -- how to make it so I can open the fence when I want to work in the garden. I'm trying to think of the laziest way possible that will still keep the bunnies out.)

Finally, we laid down some cardboard to smother the grass, and covered with a thin layer of soil to hold it down. Remember, we still don't have a shovel. We used a plastic snow shovel and a tiny hand spade. After that I immediately ordered a real shovel online.

Here it is, in all its slapped-together glory.

I've stopped there for now, since we're now out of long pieces of wood. I still plan to build two 5' x 2' beds. I think we have plenty of soil to fill them up, and I plan to add some of our (mostly unfinished) compost as well. Here's the planned layout:

I tried to maximize the beds' exposure to the southern and western sun. They're going to get a lot of good light. I also left 2' spacing between beds to make sure I have enough room to work near them.

Finally, I planned where each crop will go in the beds. Each bed is divided into square foot sections (google square foot gardening!). Depending on the plant, you can fit a certain number of plants per square foot. Below is my square foot layout:

Tomatoes grow the tallest because they are vines that need to grow on trellises. So they're all along the north side of the garden, so that their shadows don't shade the other plants. Peppers and basil are good companion plants to tomato (because of the insects they attract / repel I think?), so those are in front of the tomatoes on the same bed. Then the rest of the vegetables are in the other bed.

Rosemary and mint are also good plants for the garden because of the insects they attract/repel. Rosemary needs to be taken inside during the winter, so I'm currently growing some in a pot that I'll take outside once the weather warms up more. Mint is actually a weed, so that's also being grown in a container so it doesn't overtake the yard. 

Marigolds are good companion plants too, and they're pretty as well. But I haven't felt like buying any yet. I've been trying to pull back on my spending lately, since I just dropped a lot of money on vet bills for the cat :( I'm sure the garden will be fine without them if I don't end up planting some. And you can't eat them anyway :p

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

Spot the cat!