No Snow, But Did Build Some Garden Boxes

Well the snow never came but the rain sure did.  I understand that even Dallas got several inches, yet, we didn't-darn. 

We decided to just go on with the day, yesterday, even though the impending doom of snow was coming.  We went strait to work on some things that needed done.  I built three new garden boxes for gardening the square foot way.  It was simple enough.  There are two smaller boxes for the girls to have for their own.  I forget what they plan to grow, but they are excited to start.  I am excited to see what they can produce. 

I then made a box for my wife.  They were placed out in the garden area with weed barrier under them.  I still have to fill them.  Of course you know, that we garden with raised beds, anyway.  Until now, we used concrete, mason blocks for the beds.  As the price of these went through the roof, we switched to un-treated lumber.  We don't want the chemicals from treated lumber, so, we just plan on replacing them every few years.  We will start with the one, in addition to all the other beds that already exist.

After I made that box, we went out to prune our fruit trees.  I tell you that accomplishment feels good.  We have never pruned our fruit trees, knowing that it has to be done.  Now it is done, for this year and we are thankful for that.

I then set in to make the square foot grids that fir over the gardens.  These help determine, exactly, where to plant.  They sit right on top of the edges of the beds.

I then attempted to straiten out the tacoed wheel on my daughters bike.  As an old bike mechanic, I found this one to be a challenge and needed to step back and re-think it.  She didn't taco the wheel, we bought it from a thrift store and it came that way.  We may have to buy a new wheel.

Here are some pictures of what we built.

To the right are three potato boxes.  Simply fill them with dirt and add another when the greens come out.  This method should make harvest very simple by taking off each box and picking up the potatoes.  Below, are the same boxes, unstacked.  They are one foot square, usind 1x8 lumber simply screwed together.

This is a shot of the beginning stages of the grids.  We used lath boards in 4 foot lengths.  We then stapled them together in one foot squares.

This is a shot of one of the grids on the 4x4 box I made for my wife.  The lumber was 1x6 and screwed together to form a 4x4 box.

This picture shows some of the grids placed on the existing raised beds.  We are going to apply the square foot method to all of the gardens.  Now for some warmer weather....