A Garden To Love!

It’s been a while since I have been on here, a little frustrated about this whole garden bit. I love to get my hands dirty. I love to plant & watch my items grow. I even spent countless of hours researching the best organic way to make my veggies & fruits thrive. I even made a garden journal. Well needless to say my garden journal is now my supply & to-do-list notebook & I have acknowledged that I would completely starve my family if we relied on my gardening. But I will save you the details for later. For now let me show are beautiful before garden.

 We made the garden boxes for less then $2 ea. YES!! We used pressure treated cull lumber from home depot. Granted this was the time where you could buy scrap lumber by color code pricing, now you can buy scrap lumber 70% off its original price. 

 I added a trellis behind the boxes on ea. & put my climbing veggies in the back. This is made from window pane panels & cedar pickets.

ignore the fence color. We are going to replace our fence, that's a later project.

I have a total of 3 boxes set up this same way. Ea. had a name;  rock'n tomato, veggie & salsa. I had cut out the wood ready to paint then it all went down hill from there.

1st box: ROCK'N TOMATO, contained tomatoes of different varieties & basil.

2nd box: VEGGIE, contained, beans, squash, egg plants & other little things

3rd box: SALSA, contained all sorts of peppers & cilantro.

 

I eventually wanted to do a sprinkler system that ran behind the 3 trellises, the white pipe you see in the top pic, is now painted copper. It was going to be beautiful.  SAD.

 

I then started on my watermelon box, using the same concept as the other 3 boxes, I made it more rectangular & I built a trellis tepee with wood. This was very easy to do & very cheap. This way the watermelon had support & I could cover it easily depending on weather.

I also made an exact size box on the other side for the other melons. I didn't make the trellises for those since it was easier to grow across where it didn't take as much space.  In the corner I added a lemon tree as well. I was all set. Now I needed something to protect my chickens from entering the garden.

 

The husband and I thought long and hard about what to do. I knocked off some wrought iron off our 4 post bed & thought I could upcycle that. I couldn't figure out how to manage all that. I then tried to figure out how to build it out of wood. 2nd time a charm. We were walking into lowes & there it was a beautiful trellis for $12. we were sold.

so we decided for the industrial look and mounted it sideways, It took 4 of these to make the fence. I cut one in half. I added cedar pickets to the bottom of the trellis & in between the gaps. I used ballast as the post. They worked perfectly. 

 I then added a door (made from a bigger trellis) This cost $15 The trellis is originally 72" in height, but the bottom was broken & I got it for a discount. Normally $40. I knew that I needed a short door so the bottom didn't matter to me. I was thrilled, now my garden fenced in area was complete.

I used double washers to hold everything in place. One large one so it can hold between the wood, & one small one so it can hold the screw in place of the big one.

 Double washers & picket fence. I added chicken wire on the bottom.

 I added solar lights & landscaped the front of it with drought loving plants.

 

 the pathway was made to simplify my life. Our grass just doesn't want to grow there. So It keeps my feetsies from getting muddy.

So there you have it. We love our garden & our new Target signs (see first pic)  I have one for the henhouse too.  Sadly our garden is very empty. We have some not so nice squirrels that are just pulling up the plants and leaving them in the tree. I went to water one night and realized that ALL my tomatoes were gone. I was so upset, then next morning found them in the tree. Slowly but surely all my plants were pulled up to be found in the tree. They are now being brave enough to pull up my cacti. The war is on. We are leaving on vacation & once I am back, I am going to revamp one of the sides. I left a tree inside of the garden. What easy access. its like an open invitation, please eat, be merry & fat!  Oh well, 2nd time around is always better, right ? :) 

 

Much love & no squirrels,

  Mel