Garden Raised Beds

When we bought our house the people had moved away and the back yard was a real mess. It had a fence about 6 foot behind the deck, enclosing all this area. In the bed in this photo there was a small pond, which would have been nice if fish weren't so expensive and I didn't have to pay to keep the pump going. It attracted frogs, which attracted snakes... so we constantly had snakes right outside our backdoor. So, we took it out and filled it in. It had some rotting landscape timbers that we took out this year and we added these brick blocks to build the area up and level it off. I have 3 rose bushes behind the fire pit planter. We got a larger fire pit so I am using this one for a planter. I planted 10 tomatoes and have 7 peppers... 5 sweet banana, a green pepper, and a jalapeno. I have room for another row of 5 plants so will set out a few more, probably tomatoes.

I am adding perennials each year to our front beds. This year I added the two white plants which will spread out. The green plant in the middle is a yellow daylilly. This bed is the place between the garage/driveway and sidewalk. I also planted some bulbs around the perimeter on both sides (the edge of driveway and the edge of the sidewalk) They were supposed to be planted in the fall but I didn't do it. So, I thought it was worth a shot to see if they will bloom next spring.

I also added these red plants this year. They are annual, but I wanted a little color and liked the flowers.

I planted these last year and am so happy they have come back. I have one more grouping of the bright pink flowers on down the sidewalk under some larger bushes.

I put pansies in my large pots on the porch. In the smaller pot geraniums that I planted last year are coming up again.

We had 4 raised beds but I needed more space. We actually had to move the beds and built the long bed (24X4) behind my other beds. My husband has one more 4X8 bed to build where the dirt is in the foreground. He put up the fence to block some of the view from the road and we will use chicken wire around the other three sides. I planted a green and a red grape and blackberry vine behind the long bed and my husband is building a trellis for them.

Another view of the beds. You can see my compost bin and rain barrel near the house. We got a scoop load of soil amendment, which was not quite composted material and tilled that in the long bed area with our red clay. The four beds I already had were already filled with pretty good soil, but we lost a lot moving them. Today I bought 16 large bags of Miracle Grow compost mix, 4 bags cow manure compost, 1 large bag peat moss, and 2 bags mushroom compost and we added that into each of the beds and worked it in with the soil we had.

This is our old fire pit planter. I have my strawberry pot in the center with herbs around it. I am going to move the strawberries though, because they are getting ripe and I am going to lose them to the rabbits and birds.