Sunday, March 15, 2009

Mucho Husband (and Garden) Love

My husband has learned that the quickest way to my heart is not with flowers or candy, but with finished home improvement projects! He loves it (not really) when I dream up a new project! But he is always (mostly) willing to humor me and attempt the craziness I dream up.

We have lived in lots of different places and have moved about every 3 years, give or take, over the course of our 13 years of marriage. I have pretty much begged him for a "beautiful" garden since getting out of college 10 years ago. We have had successful gardens in the past, but then...we move and start all over. None have been "pretty," though.

We've been in our current house for 3 years now, with no moves (cross your fingers) planned in the near future. So after much begging and batting of my eyelashes, he caved on my latest idea. Over the weekend he made me raised garden beds! And, seriously, I am the happiest girl in the world!





Here is our sad little spot before -- also known as my 4 yr old's truck graveyard and digging spot.




Lest you think that I'm the only happy one here, my husband got himself a new wheelbarrow and shovel out of the deal, so all was not lost.



And speaking of happy...our chickens went right to work tossing out our freshly laid soil. We'll have to put up some chicken wire ASAP if we want our produce to survive their antics.


We used these simple directions found at one of my favorite blogs. We bought 6 -- 2 by 10 redwood boards and had them cut at 7 feet. Our beds measure roughly 7' by 3'. All the boards and hardware for these three beds cost us $130, plus we bought $50 worth of soil. That sounds expensive, but we considered it "landscaping" since they look so much nicer than a traditional garden. As an added benefit, next year (and all future years) we will have very little prep work to do to get our garden in tip-top shape. I think we have decided to add at least 2 more beds before we're done, but they might wait until next year. Hey, I'm not complaining!

Next up on my dream list is fruit trees!

3 comments:

  1. Those look really nice. I can't wait to get gardening too. That'll be a few more weeks. We've got to warm up some more. But at least Spring is making an effort here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My dream, too... Sadly, no helpful husband here. I'm happy for you, though!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your chickens I grew up haveing them too. they are such a learnig experiance.

    ReplyDelete