Garden Boxes

You might remember from older posts that we've found quite a bit of garbage buried in our yard.

Exhibits A, B, C and D:

The cement in the top picture was almost 4' long. The white disc in the second picture is the top of a prescription drug bottle. We found maybe 100+ of the clear, compostable cups, and other picnicware that the previous owners had left in the yard. Some buried, some strewn about, most cracked all to pieces. Love it. Also from another post, you may remember that the rusty barrel was not only full of garbage, but it was buried, up to the rim.

Garden boxes will help ensure we're gardening with cleaner soil, and make garden maintenance a little easier. Box design and construction is another project that I surrendered control of, and, once again, it was for the best.

My mock up of his design:

We purchased: two 4x4x12 and two 2x4x12 sticks for the vertical pieces, eight 1x6x16 yellow cedar boards for the sides, landscaping fabric, 2 1/2" screw (should have gone with 2 1/4") and 3" screws. The 4x4s were cut to 12" lengths. The 2x4s were cut to 24" lengths. The cedar was cut to 4' and 8' lengths.

The 4x4s were attached inside the corners and along the 8' section on the interior side. The 2x4s were placed along the midpoints on all 4 sides, on the exterior, and were sunk into the ground for stability. Landscaping fabric was stapled around the interior sides of the boxes to help keep soil from squeezing out between the boards.

Cost of materials was $138 and change. The project required about 9 hours of labor for one person. That one person was not me.

Now we just need to get some good, clean soil and wait for next spring to start our garden!

It's been a while

... but we haven't stopped. I realized today that it's been a month since I last blogged. We officially lost a follower, and I get so excited about followers, that it bums me out. "Sorry to see you go!"

See? No hard feelings. :-)

Our sander is still in the shop. Really, I have no clue why they've had it for so long. It's been busted for almost 2 months. And we totally could have finished anyway, without the sander, but... yea... we've been distracted.

Distracted with things like backyard demo. Pictures will be posted soon, but I assure you, it's impressive. We now have a blank slate and are excited about this project.

The backyard project includes the design and construction of garden boxes and a shed. I'll add a breakdown on pricing in future posts.

Do you use Google SketchUp? It's pretty easy. I downloaded the basic version for free, and of course, I skipped the tutorial. But I've managed to figure out most of the tools- at least well enough to come up with this:

The shed, at least according to my current plan, will be about 4'x8''. As you can see, the roof will slope down to the back. I'm hoping to use salvaged materials, so I will be hunting around at the local outlets and on Craigslist.

Stay tuned- I'll be posting more about the yard and construction projects soon!