300 Screws Later....

Spring has been extremely busy around here!

My hubby and I spent every available weekend this spring expanding and moving our square foot garden. As you remember I did quite a few posts last spring about my four raised beds. They did great and I learned a lot, including the fact that I need more growing space. There where a few things that greatly needed to change this year with our raised beds.

Placement
- The beds were not located in the best place for sun. I picked a convenient location for me but not really for the plants. Well that has changed, we moved the garden to the center of our backyard where we have the most sun! Who needs grass?

Construction
- We had great intentions with the first beds but they did not hold up well at all. This time around we made the beds to last. I am going to do a separate post on constructing raised beds. 

Size
- The first garden was a good start but this girl needs more space to grow! So we tripled the size of the garden and made a verity of different sized beds for both planting convenience and aesthetics.

Maintenance
- My hubby had a heck of a time mowing around the first garden and keeping the grass at bay. This time we made a substantial border, cut out the sod from the beginning and put down gravel.

Here are the beds set in place before we cut away the grass.  Let me tell you cutting out the grass and then leveling the beds was one of the hardest jobs we have done at our little homestead. I was sore for days after that step.

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Here is the plot after we cut out the grass. We rented a sod cutter that runs a blade right under the grass and cuts it off at the roots. Then you have to roll up the sections of grass and move them somewhere else. Grass is very very heavy and we had to move A LOT of grass... I had no idea how hard this step would be.

Stay tuned for how we built the beds and how the garden looks now all filled with plants!